Observations: Discussing a failed painting

I'm currently embarking upon creating another imaginative narrative painting. In the past, I've been able to successfully combine photo reference and observation in alternating ratios to create imagined scenes. However, there is one such painting that did not go the way I wanted despite all my efforts. So before I fully dive into this next painting, I want to try to re-trace my steps, analyze to the best of my ability what went wrong (or right), and how I can address these problems for the future.

The painting we will be discussing is untitled, but I like to refer to it as "the blue painting" (you'll see why). The scene takes place on an icy, alien world, with the two main characters, one a human pilot and the other her alien guide, overlooking a distant city. The conception for this painting began with sketches of an alien species that would become the character of the guide. After sitting on the concept for a few years, I wanted to create a faux book cover for the story I developed, inspired by pulp sci-fi and fantasy book covers of the 70s. Artists like Frank Frazetta were at the forefront of my mind in terms of stylistic goals. However, though I had sketched from imagination almost consistently for the past 20 years, I had never traditionally painted a fantastical scene like this, and didn't know where to begin.

With some guidance, it was suggested to me to create maquettes for the characters, especially the alien, so I could know how light would fall on their forms. In this regard, I looked towards James Gurney and Thomas Hart Benton for their use of maquettes for paintings. In addition, photo reference was a must for this piece, and I had friends and family pose for me. Despite the steps I had taken with reference gathering, it wouldn't be enough as problems quickly developed for the painting.

The maquettes

Firstly, the maquettes I had made were roughly sculpted and ideally should have been far more refined. Because they were made with oil clay, painting them was not an option for me, and I would have needed to make separate models to test local color with the lighting as well. The environment the characters were in was stitched together from several different references and feels nebulous beneath their feet (there is a degree of separation of the characters from environment that I was unable to resolve). No amount of reference, however good the quality, would be able to help if I never committed to a composition, which is precisely what happened.

Attempt #1

In trying to achieve so many goals with the composition, such as being able to see the distant city and enough of the environment without being too far away from the characters, I felt as though I was constantly compromising one or more of those priorities. Most importantly, I never drew a finalized composition onto my painting surface; this is my biggest downfall yet most valuable lesson by far. Throughout the painting, I changed the pilot's pose several times, and since my reference was not as good as it could have been, her anatomy and form never looked correct to me. For the environment, I pulled from multiple different landscape photographs as examples, but ideally I should have physically modeled the scene with the maquettes using foam sheets and cardboard.

After lots of scraping

Only after scraping much of the painting off did I have the bright idea to actually DRAW in the complex poses and anatomy for these characters, but in some ways it was too late (debatably). Another problem that was occurring was my lack of confidence towards my application of paint. I was initially trying to imitate the hazy, vibrant, and dreamy style of 70's sci-fi and fantasy book covers, but I got too thick with the paint too early in the painting's lifespan. In trying to remedy this problem, I started to glaze with thin layers of paint, but the medium I was using, Liquin, was drying to a tacky finish: all in all, it was a largely unpleasant painting experience.

Needless to say, I felt defeated by the end of the painting. Despite having a good amount of fun during the making of this painting, the trials I experienced made me doubt myself for a long time as to whether I could, or should, make imaginative paintings. I still don't know about the should part, but there is a want in me to try again. Failure has been a great teacher to me, and I don't regret the way things went with this painting. To end on a sillier note...did it need to be 4' x 3' feet??? NO!!! Starting off small(er)ish is not a bad idea either!

-Gigi M.

The Blue Painting