A little more work on the structure of the painting has made the shape of the piece even clearer, and I’m really enjoying the process. Continuing our work of using chalk and blue pencils to establish different features of the composition, now we’ve lined the cracks between the slabs in the marble courtyard in which the figures will stand, dropping lines in perspective from a vanishing point equidistant from the centre of each half of the painting, then softening the line to a curve so that there is some sense of a fisheye lens. Everything focuses the viewers attention onto the centre of the chair.
This morning I spent a little time studying Botticelli’s Primavera, particularly the figures of Venus and Flora, who are two of my three favorites of his women (the other being the Virtue standing beside the centaur). I’m particularly interested in the faces, which seem so extraordinarily modern, and not particularly Italian. I wonder where he found his models?
