Quent Cordair Fine Art

I find that if I take my bike to the studio before my hair is completely dry from showering, I arrive looking somewhat like Carrot Top after an accident with a faulty wall socket. Maybe I just need to pay more frequent visits to my hair stylist, but for now I’ve re-discovered the hairdryer I keep as part of my water coloring supplies at home, and have arrived at work with a minimum of resemblance to Beetlejuice, Robert Smith, or any other member of the Mozart Hair Club. So I’m in a good mood and ready to start swinging at the drapery in the painting.

I intended the blue of the drapery to be more brilliant and prominent than any of the blues in the background. So I’ll be using cobalt blue–a fairly true blue, as opposed to ultramarine, which is a purple blue, etc.–as the basis of the fabric. I lay in the lines of the darkest areas first, then brush in the mid-tones and follow with the highlights. To finish, I use a little black for the darkest darks, and a white for the highest highlights. I want a satiny finish, which is why I use white–titanium, actually. If I wanted the fabric to be less satiny, I’d make sure the highlights were more toned down.

Why blue? Well, as it turns out, back in the 1980’s physicists discovered that the microscopic crystals of true blue pigments–not greenish blue or purplish blue, remember–cause a resonance in the cones of a viewer’s eye that is translated to the brain as a mild sense of euphoria when they’re placed adjacent on the canvas to very bright examples of either of the other two primary colors. Actually, I’m only kidding. But if it turns out that I’m right, I want the Nobel prize. And a cheeseburger. Right now. Seriously, though, having a dominant blue composition will accentuate the subdued reddish and orangish colors in the wings (think complimentary colors). And I myself am also particular to bright colors. Who knows, maybe my ancestors were trout.

I also take the time to complete the fastening straps on our lad’s arm. These straps are an indication that his wings are attached and not actually sprouting from his back. Unfortunately the leather cord attached to his straps is somewhat hard to see in the photo above, but I’m contemplating adding yet another before the painting is done. But I want to see the rest of the drapery completed before I make that leap.

I realize that the straps may seem odd at first, but once again, I don’t want casual viewers mistaking my flying Greek youngster for a Christian-style angel. This is their real purpose. And I didn’t want to go to the length of putting full leather harness gear on him, lest he begin to look like Edward Scissorhand’s more manually-enabled Mediterranean cousin. I think that a viewer who is aware of the title of the painting will have little trouble surmounting the logical molehill of what these leather straps on his arms could be. If not, I may need to lower the bar and just begin to put more monster trucks in my paintings.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 24th, 2005 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Icarus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.