‘Andles For Forks

Just as before, I drew the figure three times, using the yellow, red and blue blocks with some twisting to vary line widths.  Just as with the oil pastel work earlier today, I did the drawings freehand, with a grid on the source photo not on my paper.  Oh, and this one was on watercolour paper rather than the cheaper stuff I use with the inktense pencils.  I tried to put down a lot less pigment today than I did yesterday.

When it came to wetting the marks, I used a smaller brush than yesterday and tried to sculpt the 3D shapes rather than just wetting the 2D shapes.  And things just went really badly.  I’m not sure whether the blue is just really strong compared to the red and yellow or whether it was all down to me not keeping the water clean but everything was coming out dark and blue.  I tried hard to wet the reds and yellows and brush them into the blues but with no luck.

Still, lessons learned.  When I say be gentle with the colours, what I really mean is be gentle with the blue.  That’s what I’ll do next time.

In terms of colour keys, my Artgraf colours include a cool blue, two cool reds and a warm and cool yellow.  So if I only use the cool yellow the painting will be in the key of green cool and if (like today) I only use the warm yellow, it will be in triadic left.  Of the two, I find that triadic left generally makes for more colourful paintings.  Not today though.

But you know what?  This painting has grown on me.  I’m liking the colours.  They remind me a bit of some of my abstracted Western scenes where I fill figures in with starry space backgrounds.  But, unlike the figures in those paintings, this one has some 3D form.  Those creases on the right side of Candle’s waist help.  So do some of the white, yellow and red areas, which look like highlights with the light coming down from the top right.  This one’s going up for sale.