Hi y’all,
Welcome back to the blog and another installment of my Wizard of Oz puns (I feel I owe it to my home state). This week, I’m happy to announce that I’m now offering private lessons in drawing, painting, and creative writing via nailit! You can sign up for them here. To see the full range of lessons and products I’m offering, you can also go the “Shop & Learn” section of my website (more there coming soon). Always feel free to shoot me an email at slreichmanart@gmail.com, too, to inquire about purchasing originals or commissioning a piece.
Enough of the sales pitch, though — let’s get nerdy! In last week’s post, I was exploring how to visually represent Milton’s ideas about good and evil. For anyone who hasn’t read that post, I think it comes down to organization. The more organized, the more sin-free, the more chaotic, the more evil.
I decided to go with a good angel for the angel arm study I was working on last week. Here’s where it ended up:
Angel arm, side view, oil study (finished)
With this study, I think I’ve started to learn how to distinguish the fallen and unfallen angels using color, texture, and brushwork. However, as I shared last week, I think this study veered a little too far from human anatomy to really read as an arm. For anyone who doesn’t remember what the piece looked like last week, here it is again:
Angel arm, side view, oil study (WIP; finished study above)
Even with the rest of the fingers there now and the rendering complete, it still feels a little too alien to me, largely because of the proportions. With that in mind, I’ve been trying to keep the next study a little closer to human. I’ve gotten wilder and weirder with the color, brushwork, and texture (this one’s a fallen angel), but I’ve tried to keep the forms and proportions a little closer to actual human anatomy.
Angel leg, back view, oil study (WIP)
More on that study soon! And tune in to Instagram Live tonight (Thursday, March 4, for those reading later) at 6PM EST for some live action on this piece.
I’ve also been prepping for an oil study of angel wings, which I’ll probably get started on next week. I started off with a pen and ink study of blue heron wings for a reference point, then distorted them and stuck them on a back view of an angel torso. Voila, angel wings:
Blue heron wing study (above), angel wing study (below), back view, pen and ink
To get a better sense of what I might do with the wings in terms of color and brushwork, I also got a Procreate study together. You can find it below:
Angel wing study, back view, Procreate
That’s it for this week! Thanks so much for reading. Have a great week and keep creating!