Icarus: Step 14
Straight away, I need to address the foreshortening problem with the wing. It’s just too flat. My first move is to add lots of new little feathers to the area that I painted in the last step. I want the feathers to get smaller and closer together as they near the “joint” where the wing would connect to our lofty gentleman’s shoulder.
To accentuate this newly modeled form for our wing, I also go ahead and darken the area just below this so-called joint and also the area between his arm and body. These areas will be in deep shadow, which will give the necessary contrast to make the upper part of the wing look closer to us. And–nothing up my sleeve–PRESTO, we have a foreshortened wing. It’s far from complete, though, so don’t develop too much of an attachment to what you see just yet.
Okay, now I can think about our second problem, which is gradually transitioning from our lovely gold-tipped feathers to their more color-challenged gray counterparts. With the newly added foreshortened adjustment, this isn’t going to be too difficult because I really only need that transition to take place on the backmost part of the wing.
All the feathers in deep shadow are already of the gray variety, and all I need to do is add a few golden stepping stones of color at the point where the wing “folds” down. This area is also in shadow, and the subdued darkened value of the golden color makes it that much easier to pull off the transition. I add a few feathers of the straight gray persuasion below the transition just to see if it looks okay. I think we’re definitely going in the right direction this time, so we’ll take a short recess and reconvene in Step 15 for the heart-pounding conclusion to this visual wing drama.
