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The Letter: Step 4

The Letter

In step two I mentioned that I would be working through this piece is overlapping layers from the background to the foreground.  According to that formula, two remaining areas of the composition had to be finished before I could get to the more challenging (and therefore more interesting) business of painting the figure: the large, balconied building behind the legs and the concrete ledge.  Theoretically, I should have finished the vertical wall on the far left as well, but I was a little too impatient.  Also, I knew that being left handed would make it relatively easy to carefully paint up to the legs along the short border between them and the wall.  It turns out there was a less tangible reason to finish the wall first, but I will get to that later.

Concrete is very rapidly becoming one of my favorite things to paint.  Since both the building and the ledge were primarily concrete, both were enjoyable projects, if a little tedious.  I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I will again: straight, parallel lines can be maddening to paint.  Fingers don’t like to follow them, and the eye can pick out the smallest little deviation.  Fortunately I was able to finish the balconies while the paint remained wet allowing me to work at their edges from both directions, constantly adjusting them until they were straight enough.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under The Letter. 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."