AnaIv In Artgraf

I only had the energy for a quick painting today, so went for an idea that’s been kicking around for a few days. A line drawing using fineliners and then with some colour added using the Artgraf blocks. I’ve added colour to simplified drawings like this using coloured pencil and inktense pencil and it was only a matter of time before I tried this style with the Artgrafs. Today’s model is AnaIv, making only her third appearance which is scandalous given how well my paintings of her turn out.

So I put down an pencil outline first, then got to work with the fineliner brush pen. I wanted to blacken out most of Ana’s hair, just leaving the odd highlight, which I did. But then it felt odd just putting down some outlines for the rest of the painting, so I put down some very thick outlines in places and blackened some shadows. If I were to do this one again, I think I’d be a bit less extravagant with the black.

And then I got out the Artgraf blocks. I used four colours today: magenta, sanguine, yellow and blue. I took inspiration from Bill Buchman and didn’t try to match colours that I saw, didn’t try to replicate values and didn’t colour up to the edges. I just put whatever colours I thought might look good in the middle of all the big shapes and connected them together into a sort of stick man. I was careful not to use too much of the blue as it can be domineering but I guess I might have used slightly too much yellow. You can never tell how these are going to turn out until you wet them though.

Still, despite there being too much black in there and maybe too much yellow, I’m liking this one very much. It was a joy to paint this one and I think that joy comes through in the final result. Ana’s up for sale.