Skip to content • Skip to gallery information

Quent Cordair Fine Art

Click to chat with
a gallery representative

Like us on Facebook

« Analyzing and Evaluating Films as Works of Art
Sisters: Step 9 »

Sisters: Step 8

Sisters

Finishing the hair is always a favorite step for me because I never really feel like the faces are finished until then. With this painting, the effect was even more pronounced since I gave the figures such pale skin, and their hair is dark. I find the contrast quite striking, and I think it adds to the overall effect of the painting. In particular, I think it will really draw attention to the faces and facial expressions of the figures. I have made an attempt with the past few paintings to avoid over-doing the detail in non-essential areas. The hair is one of those areas where it is easy to get caught up trying to paint each strand. The extra detail really doesn’t add to the effect of the painting, and if not handled with extreme delicacy can actually make hair appear greasy. Also there is the consideration of achieving a uniform feel to the entire painting, and often very finely painted detail in the hair of a figure seems out of place with the facial features. This is a particularly important consideration on this scale, where the faces are large enough that a very high level of detail in the face would mean either painting things like pores, or over-smoothing, which gives a plastic-like feel to the skin. It isn’t easy to see what I mean in these images anyway; the camera tends to exaggerate certain brush-strokes and leave out others. As I look at the effect in the original, however, I think the detail level is just right.

Tags: ,

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 11th, 2006 at 11:34 am and is filed under Sisters. 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.

Leave a Reply

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."