The Artist's Studio

Icarus Step 5

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:39:01 +0000

The sort of pseudo-engineering of the wings and their mechanical harness was one of the most fun aspects of working on this little study. I say pseudo-engineering, because I am fully aware of the impossibility of this setup actually allowing anyone, regardless of their physical strength, to glide…much less achieve powered flight. All I was after was a design that looked somewhat plausible and, more important, looked cool. For me, the mechanical nature of the wings is everything. The important part of the story is Daedalus using his ingenuity to defy the gods and the fates. Wings grafted onto Icarus’ back with no visible hint of their operating parts would never have flown…so to speak. Having said all of that, I do plan on modifying this design slightly when I get around to the final painting mainly by increasing the wingspan by at least a third, and perhaps revealing a little mechanical articulation at the main joints in the wings.

Also in this first image, you will note the completion of Icarus’ wee toga, complete with trailing drapery in the style of all good paintings of Greek myth. Sadly, for compositional reasons, and violation of the plausible direction of airflow during our hero’s descent, the trailing drapery’s part in this painting is to be short lived. Even so, painting the toga was an entertaining exercise. My model, as you may imagine, was not so draped during out little photo shoot. In fact, he was wearing the modern day equivalent (a paint of tasteful boxer briefs) which would have been completely anachronistic and considerably less graceful in the painting. So I had to improvise. Certainly I could mock-up some sort of reference for the final painting; though I think I pulled this temporary fix off well enough.
At this point, I was itching to get to painting the wings. However, being the patient painter that I am, I decided to finish the figure first. All that remained was the legs. As with the rest of the figure, my model’s physique provided me with way more information than I could possibly fit into a painting, especially a smallish-sized study such as this. So, working on the legs was as much an exercise in selecting essential details as it was in mixing colors and values. Here is an image of the first leg I completed (the figure’s left)…

…and one of the complete figure, awaiting his wings:

Icarus Step 4

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:48:12 +0000

Next I moved on the torso, working in the same fashion as with the arm. Again, the amount of detail available in the reference photos was far greater than would be appropriate for the painting, so I tried to carefully select just those details that would get the job done without going over the top. Even so, you can see there is a lot going on. Here is where the careful and accurate work on the drawing and the transfer really pays off. Since I’ve already figured out where everything goes, how big each muscle is, and how they all fit together, all I have to worry about is color and value…which is plenty…believe me. Not only does each individual form have to turn in space, but the torso as a whole has to appear round.

After the torso was finished, I continued on to the right arm.
All of the flesh tones were basically dry within two days. I decided to paint the leather straps across the chest and around the wrists, as well as the hair before continuing work on the rest of the figure. I didn’t have any scrap for the leather, and I changed the hair enough from the photos that I basically had to wing it there as well. It took a lithe bit of tweaking and adjusting, but in the end I think it worked out pretty well. This photo is obviously not the best, but you get the idea.

Icarus Step 3

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:59:04 +0000

The main point of the study may be resolving lighting and design issues with the wings, but it is also a good excuse to do a little figure painting. Besides, the better the rendering of the lighting and color on the figure, the better correlation I can achieve with the lighting and color on the wings.
I started with the face and left arm, since it’s easier for a lefty like me to work from top to bottom and right to left whenever possible. My main goal here is to sculpt the figure, paying special attention to their orientation to the light source, to achieve the illusion of the shapes and forms curving away in space. The model for Icarus was particularly fit. When setting up to shoot the scrap, I had him pull against a wooden pole behind his back to activate the correct muscles in his chest and arms. After a minute or two, the amount of detail visible in the striations of muscle and network of veins was incredible. When painting from such highly detailed reference material, the trick is always to pull out just enough information to get the point across without allowing the details to become more important than the overall form.
I have had many questions about Icarus’ facial expression while working on this painting. To answer a few of the most common, Icarus is looking down because he is negotiating a landing. While it may not be completely apparent in this smaller, more quickly painted version, his expression is one of concentration, and he is breathing out with the strain of hauling against the wings to stop his forward momentum as he touches down. The expression is actually very well represented in the scrap, since by the end of the photo shoot the model was breathing harder with the strain of pulling against the dowel and holding his weight on his bent right leg.

Icarus Step 2

admin — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:24:46 +0000

There are many methods available for transferring a finished drawing, sometimes called the cartoon, onto the canvas, panel, ceiling, or whatever other surface an artist may choose to work on. Often, the final painting is designed to be much larger than is convenient for working out the details of the drawing. This is usually the case for me. When it is, I have most often used a grid system to simultaneously transfer the drawing and blow it up to the correct size. Other painters may use a projector or a large format photocopy machine and a charcoal or paint direct transfer.
With this study, I originally intended to paint on an 18 inch square canvas, well within the size range for drawing full scale. In the end, however, I ended up opting for a slightly larger canvas, 20 X 20. I decided to make use of available technology, and took my finished drawing to Kinko’s where I enlarged it to 20 X 20 and lightened the lines. Fortunately, I had the foresight to make a couple copies. I first employed the old standby for direct transfer, a charcoal transfer. I’ve used this trick many times with great success. Basically, you coat the back of your drawing with a nice even coat of charcoal. Then the drawing is carefully taped into place on the canvas. By carefully tracing over the drawing with a nice sharp pen, the drawing is pressed onto the canvas.

The only drawback to this method is that not only is the transferred image likely to smear or brush off, the charcoal can also tint the paint that is applied over it. So the drawing has to be fixed in some way. The best way, though by far the most time consuming, would be to trace over the drawing with thinned paint or india ink. The easiest is a light pass with a fixative. This works well enough, but is not exactly archival. I decided to try a light coat of dammar retouch varnish. This fixed the drawing, but not for long. Since this was meant to be a quick lighting and design study for the wings, I originally intended to leave the background unfinished. Rather than have the figure surrounded by a field of plain, flat gray, I hoped to put a nice warm, mottled wash of burnt umber over the canvas before I started painting. Unfortunately, the wash lived up to its name and completely washed the dammar coated drawing away. The color and texture it left on the canvas were lovely though.

I decided to use the setback as an opportunity to work on perfecting what I think would be the absolute ideal in direct transfer, a technique I was exposed to at the Grand Central Academy, the oil transfer. I’ve tried this technique a few times before, and although it worked well enough to allow me to complete the paintings, it was sloppy and inexact. A perfect example is this oil transfer I used while painting ‘Contrast’:

You can see what I mean. The drawing is there, but the line quality is inconsistent and blurred. The painting turned out beautifully, but I had to stare at this ugly drawing the entire time I worked on it. More problematic, I had to spend much more time reconstructing details with paint that should have been worked out in the drawing. Very time consuming.
What I ended up doing was taking some ideas from the charcoal transfer and applying them to the oil transfer. It seems obvious now, but the problem was that in applying the thin layer of Burnt Umber oil paint to the back of the drawing, even with a nice stiff brush, the thickness of the coat was varying just enough to result in unpredictable transfer to the canvas. So, I applied the paint and then, as I would with charcoal, I spent 10 minutes carefully wiping down the paint layer with a paper towel, smoothing it out and working it into the paper. The resulting transfer was light, but perfectly crisp and as close to the original drawing as could ever be expected. Best of all, now the only materials on the canvas are oil colors. No charcoal, no retouch varnish, and certainly no fixative.

Burnt Umber is a ridiculously fast drying pigment, so I would be able to begin painting as early as the next day.

Study for Icarus

mycor3 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:12:10 +0000

Step 1 (Icarus1)

Every once in a while, an idea is just big enough that it warrants a little more planning than usual. Such is the case with a composition involving Icarus that I have had on the back burner for some years now. Eventually, the painting will be a multiple-figure composition depicting Icarus landing triumphantly in Sicily to the amazement and relief of the onlookers. Obviously I am taking a bit of artistic license with the original Greek story which goes something like this:
Daedalus, a famed inventor, problem solver and mere mortal is imprisoned with his young son on the island of Crete. In order to escape, Daedalus spends years engineering and building a set of wings for himself and his son, Icarus which they will use to fly to Sicily. Limited by the available materials, Daedalus fashions the wings using wax to attach the feathers to their framework. By the time the wings are ready, Icarus is an adolescent. As they prepare for their flight to freedom, Daedalus warns Icarus of the design limitations of their flight apparatus: Fly too close to the water, and the feathers will get wet and become too heavy to fly. Fly to close to the sun and the wax will melt resulting in a fatal fall to the ocean below. In the original story, Icarus is overcome with the ecstasy of flight and, forgetting his father’s warning, flies too close to the sun and falls to his death. In my version, Icarus respects the physical limitations of his father’s wings and successfully makes the trip to Sicily.
I will leave the details of the final painting for an Artist’s Studio installment in the future. This study will be a much smaller painting featuring only the figure of Icarus and an extremely simplified background. Why the study? While in New York last summer attending a seminar at the Grand Central Academy, I met a model who perfectly fit the bill for my image of Icarus. I took the opportunity to shoot some very excellent scrap of him posing as if just touching down from flight. Of course, he wasn’t equipped with wings, and shooting the scrap on the fly in an unfamiliar studio, I had no opportunity to come up with even the crudest mock-up for the reference photos. As a result, I am painting this study to work out the design of the wings, their coloration, texture, attachment to the figure and the lighting so that when I get around to painting the final piece everything will fall right into place.
The first step was to do a sketch of the figure from several pieces of reference material and then work a rough idea of the wing design into the drawing. The figure and even the design of the wings don’t have to be absolutely perfect at this point…just close enough that any work on the lighting etc. will translate smoothly over to the final composition. This is the drawing I ended up transferring to the canvas…an adventure in and of itself. Stay tuned….

Deliberation Step 7

mycor3 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:51:04 +0000

As I mentioned, I was unhappy with the flat concrete wall almost the second I finished it. Yes, it was busy, but I also thought it was making the figure look a little crowded. Still, I was limited in what I could place behind the Woman by the reflections in the Floor. Eventually I realized that a cylindrical concrete column would fit the basic shape of the reflections, but would also push back into space and open up the room so the figure wasn’t all crammed into the corner. I also determined to keep the texture of the concrete fairly smooth, and let the play of light around the column add the interest. I think it was a huge improvement.

As for the vista behind the column, I had originally intended to incorporate an arched bridge of some kind to continue the curve formed by the figure’s leg. However, I was so happy with the figure, and had been so decidedly unhappy with the way the flat, busy concrete had competed with her that I elected to keep the entire background as clean and simple as possible. A blue sky with a few white clouds would play off the white shirt and blue skirt, and let the woman be the only focal point in the entire composition. I also really liked the new aesthetic that was emerging with the long vertical lines of the column and its reflection, and the long horizontal of the floor. It again focused everything on the figure, now the only non-linear component in the picture.
The changes to the concrete and the addition of the sky finished the painting. I am still extremely happy with the final result, even more so than if I had kept to my original concept. Unfortunately, my original title ideas along the lines of ‘Arch’ or ‘Structure’ now wouldn’t work. But the figure’s posture, pose and facial expression suggested to me a person on the cusp of making an important decision. Once the word ‘Deliberation’ came to mind it seemed to fit the mood of the painting perfectly.

As always, I am more than happy to answer any questions or hear any comments about ‘Deliberation’, my methods, my thoughts on Art in general or any of my other pieces.

Thanks for reading.

Deliberation: Step 6

admin — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:16:41 +0000

I had so much fun painting this hand. Now that the new technique is getting more familiar, I am able to concentrate less on the technical side of things, and more on the aesthetic. I have always enjoyed painting hands. I find them to be often just as expressive as faces. This one was also lit in a very beautiful way, and so gracefully draped across the foot. As with the other flesh in this painting, I started out with an under-painting which was allowed to dry, and then came back with the flesh-tones, working into a thin layer of oil and burnt umber. In between those two steps, I decided to begin dropping the background into place. Having been on a bit of a concrete bender lately, I dove right in. I was already really pleased with the floor, and was limited by the reflections as to the basic set-up of the wall behind the figure. As soon as I finished it, however, I disliked it completely. It was far too busy and flat. I would eventually paint over it. At this point I was also beginning to think about what would be outside the windows.

Deliberation: Step 5

larsen — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:36:32 +0000

Before moving on to the over-painting on the legs, which would represent a very large area of uninterrupted flesh-tones painted in a still somewhat experimental technique, I decided to paint the polished concrete floor on which the figure is sitting. This was pretty straight forward, as I had really good scrap of the concrete surface (though in the photos the surface consisted of a concrete coffee table, and I had to extrapolate the effect to the edges of the composition). Once that was complete, I started work on the legs, the right (and in this composition, the most distant and simplest) first. By the time I had finished work on the right leg, using the same basic technique as I had on the right arm, I was feeling much more confident with the new technique. In fact, the left leg, which should have been the most difficult part of the painting, was finished in only two six hour sessions, and turned out to be what I still consider to be some of my finest flesh painting to date. Even the foot went smoothly, the complex anatomical layout having been completely taken care of by the under-painting. So far, I’m loving this technique.

Deliberation: Step 4

larsen — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:21:14 +0000

My next move was to do a little more under-painting, this time for the legs. I worked on the figure’s right leg first, the one in the back mostly obscured by skirt and the left hand. I started off fighting the paint a bit as I had with the arm. I was having difficulty controlling the transparency of the burnt umber mixture as I blended it into the thin layer of turpentine and burnt umber I had applied to the whole area. Keep in mind… this is a technique I had only used twice before. Once on the arm, that had been equally difficult, and once on the face, that had been an experiment and somewhat of an accidental discovery. By the time I started in on the under-painting for the left leg, however, I had figured out a few things. I did away with the first wash coat entirely and painted by building up areas of darker value with gradual additions of pigment. It was slow going at first, but the control was incomparably better and I got a lot faster. The left leg ended up taking roughly two thirds as long to block in as the right, even given its larger area and higher level of complexity.

By now the arm was dry enough for the over-painting. As I had with the face, I started by applying a very thin, transparent and almost colorless wash of burnt umber, turpentine and linseed oil over the entire arm. Then I mixed a string of flesh tones from titanium white, burnt umber, yellow ochre and cadmium red, and gradually worked the colors into the glaze layer, allowing the paint to remain translucent in the transition to the shadow areas and almost transparent in the shadows themselves often leaving the under-painting showing through. Only in the most direct light did I put down an opaque layer of paint. The glaze made blending exceedingly easy, and I was able to adjust the hues and chroma (color intensity) of the flesh tones on-the-fly right on the canvas as I went along. It was a little harried at first, but good practice, especially as I knew I would have to eventually do the same thing with the large section of continuous skin on the left leg, and it would have to be done in one sitting before the glaze layer began to tack up…around 7 hours at the outside. No pressure.

But first the under-painting on the legs would have to dry. In the mean time I worked on the skirt. The light shining through the fabric made for really fun painting. I started in the back (in relation to the picture plane) where the effect of the translucence was the most pronounced.

Next I moved on to the front section, starting on the right to keep my hand away from the fresh paint as I moved along.

And finally I finished with the hem along the edge of the skirt.

Deliberation: Step 3

larsen — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:26:57 +0000

In order to work as efficiently as possible, taking into consideration that all of the flesh tones would have to be painted in two passes with the first pass completely dry before beginning the second, and that it is almost always simpler to paint those areas that are furthest back in the picture plane first, I elected to paint the under-painting for the right arm next, and then paint the shirt while I waited for that to dry.

The under-painting for the arm was a simple enough project, but its size combined with my relative inexperience with the technique meant that it took most of a full work day to finish. The good news is I learned a lot about controlling the transparency of the paint, and keeping the surface smooth in the process, and later areas of under-painting went much faster.

Over the next few days, I worked on the shirt. Moving in a general right to left direction (I’m left handed… this way I’m less likely to set my hand down into freshly applied paint) I painted sections of the shirt, trying to finish each day along a large wrinkle or break-line so that the next day’s work would join up seamlessly.

Here is a better shot of the finished shirt: