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Icarus: Step 20

Icarus

Time for the snap. WHAM! Were you ready for that?

Ah yes, nothing like an intense, bright color to round out a chilly blue composition. Put some fire in its belly; you know what I mean? Well, excellent. This is my favorite part of working on the painting–anticipating the effect that swath of brilliant yellow will have on the composition, and then seeing it materialize exactly how I planned. So I now have a solid bass drum to put the thump under the high hat of my jazzy blues. Let’s talk about yellow, shall we?

The actual fabric I used to model the yellow sash was more of an orangey yellow. Now cadmium yellow is an orangey yellow, but the original fabric was a bit too orangey and didn’t have quite enough zim in its zam for the effect I wanted. The yellow area is small compared with the amount of blue space in the painting, so I knew I was looking for a real firecracker–the Mighty Mouse of yellows. Now my advice to you in this situation is to go back to the fabric store and find exactly the color of yellow sash you need. That’s what a responsible person would do. On the other hand, if you find yourself working on a painting step by step in front of a large audience, feel free to take the riskier route of higher potential humiliation, forget about the fabric store, and dive right in with wild abandon.

Opting for the latter route, I have to mix alternate colors and use my modeling fabric only as a suggestion of shape and form (which translates to: “additional work, more chance of messing up”). To get a real brilliant yellow, I use pure cadmium yellow right out of the tube for my mid-tones, and make the shadows fairly orange in color to create a nice simmering foundation for those highlights. Cold shadows would dampen the effect, and with warm orange shadows we’re guaranteed that the blue toga will have its complimentary color living right next door, reaching over the fence and picking from its prize cherry tree, stirring up their old rivalry. Exactly what we want. Friendly neighbors make for boring paintings (although they’re often good for barbeques).

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 27th, 2005 at 12:38 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.

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About Bryan Larsen ~

Bryan Larsen

"I was born on February 12, 1975, and have been drawing as long as I can remember. By the time I was in high school, I knew I wanted to be an artist, although at the time I didn't have a clear idea of how exactly I would use my talents to make a living.

"As I continued studying art, I began to suspect that fine visual art was dead. No one seemed interested in teaching students how to draw well, or paint well. More often than not, my own skills exceeded those of my instructors.

"The only field left that seemed to require good drawing, painting, and compositional skills was illustration, and therefore I began studying illustration at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. I became even more convinced that I had made the right decision in staying away from fine art as I endured course after course of required "drawing" and "painting" classes in which instructors required me to draw with "less focus", or use ridiculous materials such as shellac, glue, sand, salt, etc.

"My second year at Utah State, I met Damon Denys. In discussing Art with him I realized that there were other people who believed that technique and subject matter were indispensable components of any work of art. I then decided that I would work to develop my own painting skills with the purpose of creating artwork that I considered worthy of being called Fine Art.

"Since that time, I have studied on my own: Drawing from live models to learn the human form, studying proper painting techniques from any source I could find ample reason to trust, and developing a philosophy of Art based on reason, and life on earth.

"My goal is to portray the heroic and romantic in human nature and human achievement in a realistic style and a modern setting. I place particular emphasis on composition, technique, realistic detail, proper craftsmanship and consistency of style."