Icarus: Step 16
With the wings now wrapped up, I can finally get down to the figure himself. When I start work on the central figure in a painting, there’s usually a sense of anxiety that creeps up in me. I liken it to reaching the top of the first big hill of a roller coaster. That moment where the car stops and you’re staring down at a huge drop and thinking, “well, there’s no turning back now”; it’s sort of like that, only not quite as intense. It’s definitely exciting.
Well, here we are then, at the top of the roller coaster, just about to take the plunge. Better hang on and, please, keep your hands inside the car at all times. This is for your own safety as well as mine. I won’t assume responsibility for any lost limbs as we enter the final stretch of the painting’s progress.
I like to start with my figure’s head. It’s the most important part of a figure, as well as the easiest to screw up. And I’m a fan of lopping off the difficult areas of a painting as early as possible so the rest of the painting knows who’s boss and doesn’t cop a tough guy attitude with me. I’ve included 3 shots of the head in progress.
In the first of the three progress shots, I start with a palette of only 4 colors and begin to lay in the boundaries of the different areas of the face and beard. To indicate the eyebrow and beard, I use a tone that’s lighter than they will eventually be. It’s a lot easier to make changes to light-colored paint than it is to really dark or black paint. So I map out what will eventually be the darkest areas with a mid-tone color for now. When I know I’ve got them just where I want them, I’ll then go ahead and darken them appropriately, as you can see in the third progress shot.
In the second progress shot, I’m still working with mid-tones, but I’ve added a couple more colors to my flesh palette to begin adding depth and complexity to the skin. Once I’m confident that all the details of the face have been laid in and look like they’re in the right places, I go ahead and add the darkest darks, the lightest lights, and other subtle hues that need to be mixed separately, like the pinkish lip color, the burnt red where the nostril meets the cheek, etc. etc.
I also have to work on part of the neck at this stage. In order for the beard to look natural, it has to be blended with the adjacent flesh areas while the paint is still wet. So I have no choice but to lay in the neck at this point. I’m careful not to make the beard too clean cut, because that would feel too contemporary to me and I don’t want my figure to look like a Hollywood actor playing the role of a Greek hero. I also need to blend the flesh with the hairline while the paint is still wet–I don’t want him to look like he’s wearing a bad toupee–so I go ahead and chop in the basic flow of the hair too.
June 13th, 2005 at 3:05 pm
Sara, part 2:
Okay, Sara, to address the second question in your comment: do I ever experience “artist burnout”? Hmm. In a manner of speaking, I suppose I sometimes do. But let me explain:
First of all, I’ve never experienced the, as you say, “ugh.my job” feeling in regards to painting. Not once. There are days when I’d rather not be working, sure. But it’s a special perk of being self-employed that on such occasions you have the liberty to choose not to “clock in”. To be honest, I think a huge part of being an artist is experiencing things and keeping oneself inspired and motivated. It’s difficult to broaden your horizons when you’re parked in front of an easel all day every day. If you don’t get out and experience real life on a regular basis, you’re likely to become dull, and your work is likely to follow suit. At least, this is my personal opinion. So in that sense, what most people consider to be not working really does qualify as a legitimate part of what I do professionally.
But painting is, for me, an emotional roller coaster ride. It’s a far cry from the jobs I had during and before college, where I had to show up, perform a task for a designated number of hours, and lo-and-behold a paycheck materialized every fortnight. As a painter, I don’t get paid for “being there”, or showing up on time. If I slack off on my job it will show in the final product, resulting in a less well-crafted painting that is less likely to sell and less likely to allow me to buy a shiny new Vespa for the warm summer months ahead. This fact puts me under a lot of pressure. Even more so when you consider the fact that my style is time consuming, and I’m not a fast painter to begin with. So even compared to other painters who fire off half a dozen paintings a month, I don’t have a lot of leeway to miss the target too often.
So the actual work of painting can and usually is highly stressful and demanding, physically, emotionally, and mentally. There is also the fact that the painting itself dictates the time I spend in the studio. I tend to clock out when the painting lets me clock out. This may be after only 1 hour, or after 10. Or it may be after 2 days of not being able to touch the canvas at all. My schedule is erratic, and there are times I wish I could have the predictability of a 9 to 5 job with weekends free and a guaranteed paycheck every other Friday. Painting as a profession is not for those who value security over personal freedom. In that sense, I do think it helps to be a little wild at heart (or a lot) to really enjoy it.
As a person who prizes personal freedom far above security, I enjoy the lifestyle immensely. The closest thing to burnout I experience is more or less a sense of impatient frustration. I’ve never felt like I can’t or don’t want to paint anymore, or that I can’t bear to look at paints. But there are many times I’ve had that feeling toward a single work in progress. My paintings often take weeks to complete, and there are plenty of times I’ve burned out on a particular painting that’s been giving me trouble, or that I just wish could be finished so I could start on a new exciting idea I’ve had. Sometimes I work on small, fun side projects to give me a breather. But when you have a canvas half-finished and looming in the corner, and you know you have to complete it before you can start anything new, it can be somewhat daunting.
The bottom line, from my perspective, is that although there is that rumor floating around that if you make what you love into a job it will suck the enjoyment out of it, the truth is this: yeah, it does make painting less care-free than it was as a hobby, but I’d much rather experience work stress doing something I love than experience the same thing doing something that doesn’t bring me huge emotional rewards when it’s going well. Regarding that popular rumor, I’d guess there’s probably an important distinction to make between your craft being just a pleasant hobby you enjoy, and being something that you truly are passionate about. If you really are passionate about something, then any chance to do it is a good one, I’d say.