Thursday, May 28, 2009

New Figure Drawings of the Female Nude - Charcoal and Pastel

As usual figure drawing group was a welcome activity on Wednesday evening! It is so wonderful to have that time dedicated for figure drawing. I look forward to it every week!

This is a five minute drawing. I loved how our model chose casual, relaxed poses that gave a lot of curves in her form.

We worked from the next pose for about an hour with a short break. I chose to draw on a white pastel board, and I used charcoal pencil and a water wash. I loved the way the water effected the charcoal that was already on the board, plus how it changed the way the charcoal looked if i drew on top of an area that was already wet - the charcoal looked much darker and glided on the surface creating a different type of mark.




The detail above shows some of the variety of mark-making achieved with the charcoal pencil and the wet brush.

Other than working a bit on the profile (I'd like the face to feel softer, especially around the nose) I am pretty pleased with the drawing.I had in mind for a quick abstract pastel that my palette would be borrowed from one of my FAVORITE lace-cap hydrangeas that is blooming in a yard close to my house ( I swear if it wasn't morally reprehensible I would steal it in the middle of the night!) The flowers are a gorgeous periwinkle blue mixed with white and the stems are a deep reddish brown. I'll try to take a picture so I can show you the colors that inspired the palette above!




5 comments:

Ripper Arts said...

Amazing work, as usual! I like the abstract best. Great colors!

Victoria Webb said...

You capture the figure so well in these black & white charcoal studies. Relaxed, poetic and compositionally impeccable at the same time.

Lilacpop said...

Wow, you are the real deal! Amazing work. Wish we had a group like that in the Detroit area! I miss life drawing. I always took a class every semester in college--probably about 12 classes!

Krystyna81 said...

Thank you for the kind words Victoria and Talina! Lilacop - I agree! I took about 12 semesters, too! Was very lucky to have s variety of amazing instructors all who showed different and useful techniques. And you should start your own group! I guarantee you the need is there :)

Ronald Stevens said...

charcoals are great....love your pastels too...very vibrant and saturated