Making of Birthby Vivien Hulbert, Canada
My eyes were getting tired of seeing the image always at the same angle so I flipped it. I decided that I would have given my Venus beautiful long hair, because I find long hair to be so wonderful and feminine. I sketched it in quickly so I would remember to work on it. Then I really went in and worked on the feet and started refining and finalizing the skin.
There was a lot of tweaking to be done yet: the thighs were too long, feet too small, arms and hands still had to be completely painted. I accentuated the curve in her hips slightly, and decided to make Venus a brunette and tested some hair brushes. Then I put in the first base of the skirt, but don’t ask me why I used red...!!! ???
I put the piece on hold for several months but then came back to it. I was tired of it and changed the colors and was thinking even of changing the whole theme.
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I abandoned the piece again for many more months, but the thought of the file sitting in my computer unfinished ate away at me until I decided to finally finish it.
I had put it on hold for a number of reasons, one of them being that I wasn’t sure on how to do the lower portion of the background and I got frustrated with it. It had changed from her standing in water, to her with her feet in the sand, to her standing on ice!
I was pretty sure about the long vertical format that I wanted, with the clouds behind the figure, but I honestly didn’t know where I wanted her to be. I decided I definitely wanted water nearby since in theory she was supposed to be emerging from the waters. I also really wanted to stay away from the classical “Venus in shell” theme so I did some research and looked at various birth of Venus paintings. I found lots of inspiration in Bouguereau (like always!) for the colors, and finally decided that I would quite simply have her standing amidst natural elements, like watery grass and flowers.
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After that it was a breeze, I was past my “painter’s block” and it was just a matter of painting it in what was missing and adjusting the colors. I tweaked the body a little more too; elongated the legs a tad, slimmed down the raised arm because it looked off, fixed the neck...
I opted for a warm yellow-ish tone in the end, and I tried to give her body a surreal kind of “self-emanating” glow. When I was finished virtually all the painting, I flattened it and applied a warm yellow filter to the whole image, it can really help to tie the piece together at the end if you do this.
Below shown the final image and above in right is the original reference, for those who would like to view it:
Portfolio: vivien82.cgsociety.org
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