Portraits

These were painted as half-figures in the studio, but the constraints of my scanner forced me to crop them as portraits. Probably better that way anyway.

Leaning Female Figure

Still practicing the figure in watercolor. I recently took several paintings to show a friend whom I respect as both an artist and critic. Among other things, he suggested I try to unite my backgrounds with the figures by sharing the lighter, fleshy hues a bit more. This was painted soon after, and yes, I think it's an improvement. I'm particularly happy with the pillow and stool.

Standing Female

It was great to return to figure drawing at Manifest this Tuesday after a 6-month hiatus. I'm struggling with showing subtle modulations of form, but I like the looseness. For the first time, I employed opaque white. I like it on the braid in back, not so much on the shoulder. I think I need to be less of a purist —but judiciously so.

Reclining Female

Last week was my first figure drawing session since mid-December. I was dreading the return to the art horse after being away so long. Maybe my low expectations gave me some added comfort, because I felt surprisingly relaxed throughout the short poses. I then painted this watercolor sketch of the reclining model —no face, which makes things considerably easier.

I'm thinking of going back into it. Not sure.

Seated Figure

I'm back at Manifest after a month-long hiatus. Been feeling very rusty for the past few weeks, but I kind of liked this one from Tuesday's session.

The details in the face are comprised of about ten brush strokes and a couple of scratches with a knife. Less is more.

Seated Female Figure

I forgot to bring my brushes to drawing last night. Fortunately, I had a few cheap hake brushes in my box, and I was able to lay in some light washes with those. This forced a change of style, which probably wasn't a bad thing.

A very helpful fellow artist lent me a small soft round brush during the break, and I was able to drybrush those dark gray areas in the background with that. The highlights were created with a large wad of paper towels and I was happy to let the pencil sketch do the heavy lifting in the facial area.

Another Seated Female

Seated Female

Latest Watercolor Exercises

These two watercolor sketches are from the first two weeks of the fall session at Manifest. I'm pretty happy with the progress overall.

I've been trying to work in a bolder looser fashion. I'm also trying to forfeit a lot of control to the medium itself, which parodoxically gives the illusion of control in the final result.

These imperfect reproductions were taken with a point and shoot camera. I'll try to get scanned versions later —tiling them takes hours.

Seated Female Figure

I painted this one on Tuesday at Manifest. I wish had been more attentive to the proportions, but I think my handling of the watercolor has improved, and I'm reaching for a greater diversity of marks. This time, I added shadows with very watery layers of red and purple, which I think creates that luminosity that one expects from watercolor. It's a lighter piece overall —I generally prefer more darks —but appropriately soft for a nude female figure at rest.

Male Profile

This is a detail from a larger sketch of a male model. His expression came out a bit angry-looking. Probably a result of my caricaturing his brow a little.

I'm still evaluating this one. I like some of the details: the ear and sideburns, and the crazy tuft of hair, but some more control of the values and gradations in the flesh tones would help a lot. The shadow under the chin particularly bugs me.

Reclining Female

More practice with watercolor figures. I'm trying to allow the drawing underneath to play a larger role in the final piece.

I prefer the detail of the upper body, but here's the full piece below anyway:

Backside

Another attempt at controlling watercolor.

I'm obviously not in full command of where the water will take the pigment, but I can control roughly, the shape of the individual marks as well as their value. When you can orchestrate shapes and values, you can begin to create the illusion of a 3-dimensional forms on your paper, so it's a start. Another thing I can control is the composition in pencil before I go to the wet media. Admittedly, this composition is not particularly exciting —I chose the back view to give myself a better exercise in modeling the human form in watercolor.

I'm happy with the marks in the folds of the blue cloth, and I kinda like that little bit of her right arm where the shadow picks up a bit of reflected red light.

Reclining Figure in Watercolor

I took watercolors to my figure-drawing session last Tuesday, which took a bit of nerve. Although I'm not entirely satisfied with the work, I'm posting it anyway —I'm determined to gain some proficiency at this, and chronicling my successes and failures will hopefully push me a bit harder. I'm pretty happy with the head and lower torso, even though I wish I had laid in the color with less scrubbing. The model's shoulder isn't reading quite right, partly because I added a thin dark shadow on the cloth where it rises and overlaps the figure. I also struggled with the light on the breasts and lower ribcage, so the upper torso isn't reading the way i'd like it to.

I'll try again this week, and make some changes to my setup, so I can make better use of my time and materials.

Watercolor

Three weeks ago I decided to switch media. Not because I was bored with pastel —quite the opposite, as I feel I've barely begun to mine their potential. For years I've been meaning to improve my skill in using watercolor —forcing myself to paint the figure in this challenging medium should help a lot. After two lackluster attempts, I decided to move to a larger sheet of paper and put in lighter washes relying a bit more on my graphite linework. This is the result.



The colors got lighter as they dried (something I'm going to have to get used to.) So I may have to revisit this, giving more attention to the modeling of the hands and softening the bare pate. Darkening the background should help as well.