This drawing has a much tighter line quality than the little Bargue studies I've been doing lately--such a beautiful body too :) Looking at what women wore back then, it's hard to believe such lovely shapes could have possibly resided under all that yardage of fabric, but I guess they did. And I printed out a couple copies of the reference drawing--one lighter, one darker, and tried to find a happy medium between the two. The images I found online had a lot of variation, so I did the best I could with what I had.
I had to look up the story of Clytie since I was curious about this painting. Clytie, in Greek mythology, was a water nymph and lover of Helios, the sun. Helios dumped Clytie for someone else. Clytie tattled to the new lover's father about her affair with Helios, and the father had his daughter buried alive in the sand (since she had been 'ruined' by Helios). Clytie thought Helios would come back to her after his new lover was out of the picture, but he only hated Clytie more. She spent nine days sitting naked on a rock staring up at Helios until eventually, she turned into heliotrope, or the stuff that grows on the sunny side of rocks. Such a pleasant story, right? But a beautiful painting and reference study (see below).
 |
| Photo: http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/the-mountain-mists-or-clyties-of-the-mist-/11670 |
 |
| Photo: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/study-for-clyties-of-the-mist-herbert-james-draper.html |
Comments
Post a Comment