free submit 1: Roman Legionnaires - It's All in the Reference

-By Donato

We all know that feeling - you have a brilliant idea for an image, can 'see' it coming together, and then watch in misery as it all falls apart when you try to make it real. This was a common occurrence in the early part of my career as technical and artistic abilities could not match the level of excitement I felt for a given a project. I wanted to make a masterpiece, but would fail more times than not. Back then I thought this was typical of being an artist; producing two or three failures on the path to creating one worthy work of art.

Many times what I chalked up to as artistic and technical inexperience should have been placed in the category of insufficient planning. I would bring my sketches up to a certain level, making sure they were heading in the right general direction, and then launch into the next stage of development before fully working out all issues. Both artistic arrogance and deadlines made me feel confident that I could pull it all together 'later' in the final stages of the work. But what often occurred was that a shoddy foundation left incomplete in the early phases of image development undermined later decisions, leading to a cascading collapse of the unity and success of the art.

I am wiser now (actually just more experienced!) I am willing to spend much more time up front in the early developments of a work to guarantee a higher rate of success and quality in the work overall. I owe it all to planning; taking the time to research my subject, gather images to look at from life studies, find the right references, and acquire the right lighting, costumes and actors to bring life to the concept as much as possible before I get to paint.

It sounds like I may be more of a photographer or stage director than a painter, but I believe if you can step closer to the the thing you wish to paint, then the more clearly you will see it. Observations from life will dance with your artist vision and produce a more complete and complex visual language.

El Greco The Burial of Count Orgaz

Some of the most brilliant paintings from history are those images which are closely inspired by life. My favorite works from El Greco are those which balance his quirky style with that of a restraint brought on by painting what was real, not totally imagined. The Burial of Count Orgaz is one these which embodies these principles for me. The lower figure group is stunning, a master piece, while the idealized forms of the kneeling man and Christ in the upper section lack emotional and conceptual weight betraying their source as too much from the mind, not enough from nature.

A similar assessment may be said of J.W. Waterhouse's paintings where his mid-career work delved deep into observations from life and surpassed in quality the body of his late career works where it was obvious that he began to over idealize his figures and the environmental situations within which they appeared.

Of course it is easy to level criticisms at others work. But rather than just criticize, I attempt to learn from these examples and adjust my own approaches to creating art accordingly. So much of the artistic field I have been apart of is grounded in imaginary creations, from worlds unseen, creatures from beyond, and cities of dreams which have allowed the artist a very broad license to interpret what these places and things may look like. There is so much to make up, that you cannot fault an artist for taking short cuts. Yet for me, the closer these worlds press to our own, the more powerful and compelling I find their creations.

Over the years I have reined in my renderings of the fantastic and attempted to distill my art to express the emotional weight of the human moment more than any other aspect. One of the most important issues I have embraced to further these ideas is to spend more time preparing for the final rendering. My preliminary drawings are more concise. My modeling sessions are more thoughtful and planned. And most importantly I am more emotionally connected to my imagery than ever before.

Below, I share with you the process of a recent book cover commission for Tor Books which hits home for me on these issues. Here we have the trials of legionnaires in combat, battling an approaching horde of horse-headed mythological creatures. Rather than honing in on the fantastic designs of the monsters, I preferred to concentrate my emotional focus upon the desperation of soldiers in conflict, struggling for their very lives against creatures from their nighmares -a viewpoint I think my viewers can more readily relate to as we have all battled our own demons in our dreams - catching glimpses of them out of the corner of our eye yet never see them fully formed...nor wanting to.

My thoughts on lighting, staging of the moment and acquisition of references are all focused upon bringing us to the edge of the nightmare, but not going too far into it.

Enjoy the progression of the painting as it unfolds!

Roman Legionnaires

cover for Monsters of the Earth by David Drake

20" x 48"

Oil on Panel