The Letter: Step 1
Welcome back, one and all, to the studio. It has been roughly 8 months since my last installment, but during my hiatus, I have still been spending as much time as possible in front of my easel. This time around I will be walking you through the completion of my most recent painting, ‘The Letter’ which was actually completed on the 21st of April.
This painting is another iteration on a theme I find myself coming back to quite often, the juxtaposition of a beautiful female figure on a concrete and glass architectural background. I really enjoy the contrast between the organic softness of the figure and the linear geometry of the structures. In this case, there is a girl lying on her stomach out on the ledge of a high concrete balcony overlooking the surrounding buildings. In one hand she holds a letter, the contents of which are left to the viewer’s imagination, and in the other a simple bouquet of flowers, presumably accompanying the letter. Beauty is the central idea of the composition: that of the flowers, the buildings and most importantly the figure, which the buildings are holding up and the flowers are a tribute to. I am working with a very wide aspect ratio, 60X28 or roughly 2.18 to 1 inspired by a conversation with a friend (a cinematographer) about the merits of the wide screen. The idea is that a painting this size, if viewed from a comfortable distance of, say three to six feet, will fill the field of vision of the viewer both horizontally and vertically, thereby adding to the sense of height and vastness of the scene. It’s an interesting idea, and certainly holds true for movies.
This first image is the first quick compositional sketch, which I made to give the model a general idea of what I had in mind. I have stopped trying to work out exact details of poses since they inevitably change depending on what works for a particular model. The pose that ultimately resulted from the scrap shoot with the model is very similar, but the figure is looking outward with her face turned more toward the viewer and the positions of the hands and feet are more natural.
This second image is a to-scale silhouette sketch of the final pose drawn from several studies of the three separate photos of the model I will be working from. The red cross-hair lines indicate the horizon line and primary vanishing point I will be using to work out the perspective of the architectural elements in the composition.
In this third image, the basic design of the buildings and the ledge as well as the general form of the cloudscape have been drawn in around the figure’s silhouette (the taller building on the right will eventually be eliminated in favor of a cleaner diagonal line through the composition). The design of the buildings is the result of at least twelve refinements on the idea that buildings of this height would benefit structurally from an aerodynamic geometry with the balconies in the lee of the main structure. The decorative block to the left of the figure are inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, although their design will change somewhat by the time the painting is complete. The red grid lines will be used to transfer this scale sketch onto the 60X28 canvas in the next image.
This image is pretty tricky to make out, but it is the actual canvas, sketched and ready to paint. The grid lines, drawn in water-soluble pencil have been washed off (the sketch was done in oil based Prismacolor pencil). I prefer to paint over a relatively complex and well worked out sketch, especially for a composition of this size and complexity. Changes to a painting already in progress are considerably more difficult to make than changes to a sketch. As is my general practice, I will be painting on a linen canvas, stretched myself, sized with rabbit skin glue and primed with a pure acrylic ground and a subsequent oil-based ground of lead white, tinted with ivory black and burnt umber.
