Scott
Burdick
Oil Painting
Demonstration
painted 2004
“A Pilgrim’s Prayer” oil on stretched, Clausens double-primed oil linen. 36” by 22”
Susan and I recently returned from Tibet and I’ve loved immersing myself in its history, religion, and culture. Recently conquered by the Chinese and being modernized by force is straining the entire of their ancient society. One can be arrested for traveling to a monastery on pilgrimage without official permission, or even for possessing a photo of their religious leader, the Dalai Lama. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese settlers are encouraged each year to colonize the growing and modernizing cities and once the new railroad is finished, the trickle will become a flood.
By traveling to the more remote areas, one can still experience things as they’ve been for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, though even here change is creeping in. Seeing herders and nomads rounded up and forcibly moved into newly built towns, their children going to schools where they aren’t allowed to speak their own language or wear their traditional clothes, I’m reminded of our own native population and how history repeats itself.
My heart is torn by what is happening, but I find it hard to be morally superior to the Chinese since I live on land that was won by my ancestors in the very same manner, as is probably true of every member of the human race, regardless of where they live. Certainly the ancient Tibetans themselves were conquerors a thousand years ago, before being defeated and retreating into their remote isolation, but past wrongs don’t excuse present ones and hopefully someday humanity will evolve to a higher level.
The utter beauty of the landscape, the people, and their culture is
tempered by an underlying psychological anxiety in this transitional time and
that is what I wanted to convey in this painting. The exotic beauty of the
girl’s face and her surroundings, combined with the slightly troubled
expression and pose, perfectly mirrored my emotional response to
This scene is complex enough that I carefully and accurately draw it out with charcoal, using the head-measuring method I learned long ago in Life Drawing class, though for simpler paintings I skip the drawing and go right into painting. Then I begin blocking in the large shapes of the face.
I continue working the larger shapes of my center-of-interest, the face, for as long as it takes until I feel I’ve got the correct value and color relationships. Don’t rush into the details or worry about losing your drawing. Remember that drawing is done throughout the painting with every stroke you put down. I want you to notice here how you always go from larger shapes to smaller. See how I've blocked in the entire dark shape under the nose before putting the smaller shapes of the nostrils on top of that. Too often I see people try the opposite by putting in the details and then trying to paint around them the rest of the time.
Only when I feel the larger shapes are correct do I put in details like the highlights and other small accents. Notice how the nose already looked three dimensional in the previous stage – the highlights and darks of the nostril are only accessories to the larger form.
Now I move onto the background and shapes surrounding the face. In reality the girl was standing in a crowd, but I chose to isolate her and use some gold, Tibetan symbols on a wall to draw the eye to the face and balance the light values of the sleeve.
Each time I move to a new area, I consider the larger shapes first, then the medium ones, and finally the smallest shapes. The reason I don’t block in the entire canvas is simply that in a large painting I’d have difficulty with the paint drying in areas prematurely.
Final Painting
It’s only at the very end of the painting that everything comes together, that’s why it’s so important to have your vision set clearly in your mind at the start. Sometimes I’ll just stare at the blank canvas for hours before I can “see” it clearly enough to actually start.
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