Daedalus and Icarus

This is Bill Sayer's latest acrylic on canvas board "Daedalus and Icarus".

Bill has also written about the myth and how he started painting.

"For those not familiar with the story, Daedalus the inventor had to flee and provided himself and his son Icarus with a set of wings. Icarus was warned not to fly too near the sun, but the impetuous youth flew too high, the wax holding his wings together melted, and he fell to his doom. I wanted to show the desperate father just failing to catch his falling son. In the absence of suitable models falling from the skies of Ledbury I had a lot of fun making these up with the help of various figure drawing references to get the anatomy right. I started with a large watercolour sketch to get things in the right place and then committed myself to canvas.

As for how I started. There were many good artists in the family history eg. Thomas Rose Miles, a noted marine artist (look him up, I have one of his smaller works), My grandfather Henry Sayer was an excellent semi-professional who was art editor of the civil service magazine amongst other things. My father was a superb engineering draughtsman, but a hopeless teacher who just assumed that I could draw, and, indeed I had to learn to draw as part of my biology degrees - but in spite of all this I did not seem to have a real talent, so had to learn the hard way with lots of instruction later in life (including life drawing). I now prefer acrylic for many subjects because i can then correct my mistakes - I think that I get an extra buzz when something turns out better than I had any right to expect!"