Study of Apathy I

This past weekend, I had the fortune of being included in the Weekend Salon of IlluxCon. It was an interesting show and as usual managed to both crush my soul and provide ample amounts of inspiration. If nothing else, the show managed to remind me of how hard I should be working if I want to be included in the main show. But then no one who has ever read this blog should find it surprising that I see my work as inadequate.

Anyway, between the cross country relocation, my assignments and two weeks spent chained to a desk doing concept art, I was left with very little time to prepare for IlluxCon this year. In addition to this lack of time, I was for a variety of reasons also short on new work to display. And so, given the circumstances, the best I could do as far as new work went was to paint a couple quick pieces that I hoped would be worth a darn. Work on these pieces was done while taking short breaks from painting my assignments at night after long days of concepting in-house in the weeks before IlluxCon, and their completion came down to the wire. Indeed I was expecting to have to varnish at least one of them during the show itself.

I decided that the first of these pieces would be figurative, and at the end of the day did not include any fantasy elements. It would be just a straightforward study. And were this a normal discussion of my work, I would show you a sketch at this point. However, where this piece is concerned, there was no sketch. I had a reference photograph I took of a model from a couple years ago (the same model that can be seen in my as yet unfinished and only recently unboxed personal piece), and a primed 5" x7" piece of hardboard. And some oil paint. And brushes and such.

Here is the result:

©Steven Belledin

Aside from what I've already said, there's very little to add. I guess I could say that I blocked the whole thing in in about two hours and then refined it in a second session that lasted about an hour. I guess I could also tell you that I enjoyed painting it quite a bit, and that I'm not entirely unhappy with the piece — especially given the fairly minimal time investment.

Tomorrow I'll show you the second one, which is quite a bit different.