"It's full of bows... "

The title is the line that first occurred to me when trying to think of a name for today's post. It comes from 2001: A Space Odyssey - the original line is "It's full of stars", but I wanted to denote the new discovery I've made about the way this painting is starting to look. Originally the composition was built almost entirely from triangles, but as I've been developing the anatomy and gradually fixing the structural problems (mostly associated with that damn upraised arm) I noticed the triangles have begun to take on a slightly different look - for example look at the line of the underside of both arms, and at the lower edge of his ribcage. As it all comes into focus and takes on its form the triangles are looking strangely - bowed.

At first I wasn't thinking bows - I was thinking brackets. You know, like on the keyboard - not the simple parentheses but the more compound double-bowed shape of the fancier brackets {these guys}. Then I realized with somewhat of a thrill what those brackets resemble.

Ironically {and I had to laugh out loud when I realized this} the line from 2001 was spoken by the character Dave Bowman...

Anyway, I'm still hammering out the issues with the structure of the drawing - getting the figure and all elements of the composition properly shaped. I'm willing to spend as long as it takes to do this - I really like the way it's firming up. Next I move on to getting the values right, and then colors. The separation of drawing, shading and coloring, as espoused by the Renaissance masters. You really do need to tackle them in that order - or at least I think you do (still pretty new to this though). It's working for me anyway.