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Motive Force: Step 8

Motive Force

Often my favorite part of working on a figurative piece is painting the figure. This is one reason I save it for last. The background details, especially elements like the gravel can get tedious and feel a little like busy work. I think if I were to finish the figure first, it would be a lot harder to stay interested in the rest of the painting. It also makes sense to paint the figure last when it is in the foreground because I can more easily fine-tune the shape, and I don’t have to be concerned about accidentally smudging a finished face with a background color.

As usual, I began the figure by painting the face. In this case I also blocked in the hair at the same time because of the large amount of blending between the shadows on the right side of the face and neck, and the darker tones of the hair. I opted to paint both hands at this point as well since I already had the colors mixed and am up against a rapidly approaching deadline. Otherwise I would have painted the figure’s left hand after finishing the suit because it is in front. I took advantage of the dark color of the suit by painting a dark outline around the foreground hand. This allowed me to control the shape of the hand while providing a small, safe area to blend into when I paint the suit later.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Motive Force. 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."