Building a Mural Part 2

In the first entry of this series I went through the steps I took to come up with an image of world peace. Once the sketch was approved I began photographing models.




With photos of all the models and various reference I refined the sketch into a more interesting drawing.



This sketch was scanned into the computer and using photoshop a number of colour studies were tried:

Double complimentary (orange with blue and red with green) colour scheme:



Triad (red, yellow, blue) with light background:



Triad (red, yellow, blue) with a near complimentary counterpoint (green-orange) and dark background:



This last version is the one that we choose to use. In the next entry I will show the painting and installation of the mural.

Beauty Part 1

The great artists of the past were aware that human life was full of chaos and suffering, but they had a remedy for this and the name of that remedy was Beauty. - Roger Scruton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65YpzZrwKI

Building a Mural - Part 1

The last couple of entries have been about drawing figures without a model and then putting those figures into a convincing space. I would like to share know how an artist (me) uses that knowledge to develop a picture from idea to concept sketch and on to finished painting.

Last year I was commissioned by a community in Calgary to paint a mural on the theme of world peace. My idea was to place the traditional figure of Peace - a winged woman with a palm branch- into a modern setting. Here are the steps I went through to get an approved sketch.

The first step is to just draw small quick sketches. Things start off slow but soon the pencil flows a little easier.




From the initial sketches I picked a couple and developed them into a slightly more finished sketch.





The client liked the idea of the peace figure coming down to meet the people. I developed the composition and added a range of ethnicities:


This is the final step in the development of the image. In the next entry I will show how I moved from this sketch to final colour study and readiness to paint.

Figures in Space 2

After one has spent a considerable amount of time practicing drawing the figure without a model (the old saying goes we all have 10 000 bad drawings in us which we have to get out), the next step is to place those figures in a convincing space.
The following images are taken from Andrew Loomis' book "Figure Drawing For All It's Worth" (http://fineart.sk/index.php?cat=1or www.alexhays.com/loomis/). They are an excellent demonstration on how to put the figure into a drawn perspective space.







Leonardo da Vinci using one point perspective:



Examples of other artists placing figures in perspective:

Andrea Del Sarto


Alma-Tadema


Gerome


Byrne


Gurney


Repin