Quent Cordair Fine Art

The real fun of working on a figurative painting is, not surprisingly, painting the figure. I like to start with the face and hair. Somehow the disembodied head effect is less awkward than the alternative of a headless body. This is a new model, really great to work with and with a very interesting face. The scrap shoot for this painting went so well, in fact, that I also ended up with figure scrap for a good half-dozen additional paintings. Since the scene is set in the brightest of sunlight with the figure resting on a very light, reflective surface and surrounded by white clouds (a somewhat difficult location replicate in late winter in Salt Lake), I opted to shoot the reference photos indoors. I was able to borrow a battery of very powerful lights from an aforementioned cinematographer friend, and a stone fireplace hearth stood in for the concrete ledge. What proved to be a challenge in painting the face was the lack of any really distinct, dark shadow areas. This meant the flesh tones were all well on the light side, and small subtleties in color made huge differences in the modeling of the forms. In the end I was able to mess with it until I was really quite happy with the result, especially once the hair was in place to add some much needed contrast between the light skin and the sky.

This image shows the face and hair as they appeared just after they were first painted. Before the entire painting was finished I reworked some parts of the face, particularly on the right side (the viewer’s right). The changes were subtle, but should be discernible in a careful comparison with images of the finished piece.

In step two I mentioned that I would be working through this piece is overlapping layers from the background to the foreground.  According to that formula, two remaining areas of the composition had to be finished before I could get to the more challenging (and therefore more interesting) business of painting the figure: the large, balconied building behind the legs and the concrete ledge.  Theoretically, I should have finished the vertical wall on the far left as well, but I was a little too impatient.  Also, I knew that being left handed would make it relatively easy to carefully paint up to the legs along the short border between them and the wall.  It turns out there was a less tangible reason to finish the wall first, but I will get to that later.

Concrete is very rapidly becoming one of my favorite things to paint.  Since both the building and the ledge were primarily concrete, both were enjoyable projects, if a little tedious.  I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I will again: straight, parallel lines can be maddening to paint.  Fingers don’t like to follow them, and the eye can pick out the smallest little deviation.  Fortunately I was able to finish the balconies while the paint remained wet allowing me to work at their edges from both directions, constantly adjusting them until they were straight enough.

Two areas of clouds still needed attention before the sky was finished. The section left of the figure’s shoulders was straight forward enough, but in order to paint the section on the right, I first had to complete the two buildings behind it. These images show the overall painting at this stage and details of the two sections of cloud and the buildings, including a third building in the front.

I had a lot of fun working on the design of these sky-scrapers. The idea was that the aerodynamic, wing shape of the structure would seriously reduce the wind-sheer on the tall buildings (assuming an area with a fairly constant wind direction). The balconies are all on the shielded side. More important to my purpose, I think they look quite cool.

The red striping on the antenna of the nearest building increasingly reminded me of a candy cane. I changed it as part of the final touch-up work on the finished piece.

I tend to work through a painting from one of two nearly opposite approaches.  Either I work in successive layers from the background to the foreground, or I paint the figure first and then fill in the background.  The first approach is by far my most common, especially with compositions involving complex backgrounds, and the one I will take with this piece.

The sky in this painting is relatively large.  So to make things easier on myself I think of it as five separate sections:  the open sky of the extreme background with its wispy, linear clouds, the group of rounded, tower-like clouds on the left and right, the middle layer of clouds just behind the buildings (two groups, one on either side of the figure), and the nearest section in front of the two towers.  Because all oil colors tend to become a little transparent as they dry, I know I will need to lay down at least two layers of paint in the whitest areas of the sky.  So, my first step is to very roughly block in the entire thing.  You can see in this image that I’m not even really worried about fully covering the primer coat at this point.

The next step is a second coat of color in the open sky area.  This layer of paint is relatively thick allowing for some manipulation of the cloud shapes as I blend them.  The main compositional purpose for these clouds is to counter the strong diagonal running from the terraced balconies of the building in top left of the canvas through the flowers on the lower right.

In these next two images the second layer of sky, the ‘tower’ clouds on the left and the right is complete.  These clouds were really fun to paint. I thought it would be interesting to echo some of the architectural elements of the buildings, namely the terraces, in the shape of the clouds.  There is also a repeating shape which mimics the pose of the figure moving from upright to diagonal as the clouds move from left to right.   I don’t know how much difference all this made to the final painting, but it was entertaining to think about it while I spent hours painting the clouds. It also added some interest to what could have been a flat, boring, empty blue sky.  Incidentally, there is a weird reflection near the top of the first of these two images that isn’t part of the painting.

Welcome back, one and all, to the studio.  It has been roughly 8 months since my last installment, but during my hiatus, I have still been spending as much time as possible in front of my easel.  This time around I will be walking you through the completion of my most recent painting, ‘The Letter’ which was actually completed on the 21st of April.

This painting is another iteration on a theme I find myself coming back to quite often, the juxtaposition of a beautiful female figure on a concrete and glass architectural background.  I really enjoy the contrast between the organic softness of the figure and the linear geometry of the structures.  In this case, there is a girl lying on her stomach out on the ledge of a high concrete balcony overlooking the surrounding buildings.  In one hand she holds a letter, the contents of which are left to the viewer’s imagination, and in the other a simple bouquet of flowers, presumably accompanying the letter.  Beauty is the central idea of the composition: that of the flowers, the buildings and most importantly the figure, which the buildings are holding up and the flowers are a tribute to.  I am working with a very wide aspect ratio, 60X28 or roughly 2.18 to 1 inspired by a conversation with a friend (a cinematographer) about the merits of the wide screen.  The idea is that a painting this size, if viewed from a comfortable distance of, say three to six feet, will fill the field of vision of the viewer both horizontally and vertically, thereby adding to the sense of height and vastness of the scene.  It’s an interesting idea, and certainly holds true for movies.

This first image is the first quick compositional sketch, which I made to give the model a general idea of what I had in mind.  I have stopped trying to work out exact details of poses since they inevitably change depending on what works for a particular model.  The pose that ultimately resulted from the scrap shoot with the model is very similar, but the figure is looking outward with her face turned more toward the viewer and the positions of the hands and feet are more natural.

This second image is a to-scale silhouette sketch of the final pose drawn from several studies of the three separate photos of the model I will be working from.  The red cross-hair lines indicate the horizon line and primary vanishing point I will be using to work out the perspective of the architectural elements in the composition.

In this third image, the basic design of the buildings and the ledge as well as the general form of the cloudscape have been drawn in around the figure’s silhouette (the taller building on the right will eventually be eliminated in favor of a cleaner diagonal line through the composition).  The design of the buildings is the result of at least twelve refinements on the idea that buildings of this height would benefit structurally from an aerodynamic geometry with the balconies in the lee of the main structure.  The decorative block to the left of the figure are inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, although their design will change somewhat by the time the painting is complete.  The red grid lines will be used to transfer this scale sketch onto the 60X28 canvas in the next image.

This image is pretty tricky to make out, but it is the actual canvas, sketched and ready to paint.  The grid lines, drawn in water-soluble pencil have been washed off (the sketch was done in oil based Prismacolor pencil).  I prefer to paint over a relatively complex and well worked out sketch, especially for a composition of this size and complexity.  Changes to a painting already in progress are considerably more difficult to make than changes to a sketch.  As is my general practice, I will be painting on a linen canvas, stretched myself, sized with rabbit skin glue and primed with a pure acrylic ground and a subsequent oil-based ground of lead white, tinted with ivory black and burnt umber.