Friday, August 27, 2010

Under the Hood: "Lady Soul"

This piece, "Lady Soul," is a birthday gift for a friend. Several of you saw this when I brought it to last week's Illustrators' Lunch.

To give a look "under the hood," I am posting the page of color experimentation that preceded this piece. Getting a blue, a yellow, and two mixed browns to balance took a good bit of patience and paint, as you'll see.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for showing the color studies as well. This image has a lot to say and I am curious about the story behind it. The six spirit representations are intriguing...

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  2. "Lady Soul" is one of the great Aretha Franklin recordings. (I was actually listening to her CD "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You." when the original sketch emerged.)

    This piece is my reaction to Aretha's voice, which transmutes pain into beauty and transcendence. So in the art, the black burst of despair from the woman's soul gives birth to golden spirits, swimming up in ecstasy.

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  3. I really enjoy your experimentation page, Brian. You do really interesting work. there's a lot of passion behind it. I admire that a great deal. Good work, my friend :)

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