La Danseuse aux sabots [WIP]
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A Graceful Posture :
The digital painting La Danceuse aux Sabots is an exercise of Character Design in which I wanted elegance and beauty prevail over the horror or discomfort that some people may feel about anthropomorphism.
But I also especially wanted to play with the censorship of the pre-19th century Academic Nude which idealized purity and beauty only in the representation of glabrous and pale female bodies by rejecting any animal belonging, as the representation of the hair.
I liked this idea of a strongly antagonistic image where the disturbing hair - symbol of bestiality and enemy of the beauty in the representation of the woman in Renaissance Art period - be suggested by the legs of a mare which I intentionally wanted themselves glabrous in order to twist a little more the reasoning.
An anthropomorphism not only frankly anchoring the human in its animality but amplifying also the elegance of a pose.
Conceptually, I aspired to another contradiction by a detailed image evoking reality while being faded and evoking dream and mythology.
I also tried to stir up the weird feeling by making my horizon separate the top with the lower legs and associating it warm values with conventional body parts and cold values with interrogating ones. This background is also conceived as a reference to the underpainting, which is a very used technique of this pictorial movement.
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Some close-ups :
The pinched and folded skin of the heels can bring a feeling of discomfort but it is nervertheless necessary for the realism of the feet position...
To improve this realism, I must enhance the detail and extend it on the whole legs. For this moment there are too many differences between the human legs, heels and legs of the mare.
The hairless and albino animal refers to the monstruosity, but the representation of the Renaissance Art women are all marmoreal. So to be honest with my concept, maybe it would be better to push the skin to the white...
