Aubrey, Seated

As I said in the previous post, it was time to do something different with the figure drawing rather than just turning the handle on the sausage machine and churning out the same painting over and over again, albeit with different models in different poses.  So I thought I’d do two things differently.

The first difference was to try out something recommended by both Kagan McLeod and Bill Buchman.  The idea is to do all the shading and texture first, then add the outline afterwards in big sweeping, energetic curves.

The second difference was to just use one colour, putting more importance on both observation and use of values rather than just looking for all the “love the colours” feedback.  Observation and use of values are the things I need to get better at to become a better artist.

The model is Aubrey again.  Not a deliberate repetition – I choose the subject matter based on the poses rather than on the identity of the models.

I actually cheated a bit and sketched out some rough outlines in pencil before rubbing them out until they were barely visible.  One thing I’ve discovered is that the “outliner pencil” in the inktense sets isn’t a normal pencil and is very difficult to rub out, so I’ve started doing outlines with normal pencils.  And then I did all sorts of shading using quite a neutral colour and trying to distinguish between dark and light values.  It looks like I’ve managed to get in four values here, one of them being the white paper.  The final stage is to wet  the pencils.  I was really careful here to not wet lighter areas immediately after wetting darker without cleaning the brush.  It’s very easy to contaminate one area with the colour or value from another.  In my colourful figure drawings it’s not a big issue but it could have caused problems with this one.

The final stage was going  to be to add that sweeping, energetic outline to the drawing but I changed my mind.  This looks great as it is, leaving the viewer with the job of imagining the edges for himself.

I rate this one a big success.  It’s up for sale.