Friday, January 16, 2009

Drawing from the Live Female Nude - on a new surface

What a great - and surprising! - night of figure drawing at Shane's on Wednesday. Our ever-growing group (20!) had the extreme pleasure of working with two lovely ladies. They did gesture and long poses together, and the pairing of the two was perfect - "A" has deep, rich brown skin and black, wavy hair. "L" is blond with long, straight hair and creamy skin. I will photograph my gesture drawings and post, those, too!
This was the second week I worked on a gessoed board, and I really wanted to work in several colors instead of just blue (see posthttp://krystyna81.blogspot.com/2009/01/drawing-from-live-female-nude-on-new.html) After the girls were posed (nice and high up on chairs so our whole group could see - and in a pose that was great from every angle) I started sketching with a red nupastel and a brush dipped in water. After I had my initial lay out I started to slowly add some blues and oranges. I held back on adding black at this point - I thought it would be too dark too soon. (The first photo is how it looked after class)
I have added a few layers of glazing to the piece (acrylic paint and matte medium) starting with a layer of sap green. The pinks and oranges were too intense for me, and I love sap green because it is a warm and transparent color which works great for glazing. I have also glazed some black over the areas of dark blue, and warmed up a lot of the skin tones. I'm pretty happy where it is now...although I am thinking that a darker background could make the pose feel more intimate.
Thanks, Shane for arranging such a great figure drawing session!
And thank you to our amazing models!

3 comments:

Audrey said...

Nice drawing! I couldn't draw a stick figure to save my life. Off to check out your shop!

Karrie said...

Your work is amazing! I love looking at it. It is truly amazing.

Elizabeth P said...

Great work!