BethR Returns

Sometimes I find a book that I can’t put down. That happened to me this week, which is why I’ve been quiet for a few days. But I’ve finished the book and wanted to get back into action as quickly as possible. I have chores to do on Mondays, restricting my time availability, so I went for a figure painting using the inktense pencils. Today’s model is BethR, making her second appearance.

I wanted to do something using only indigo today but was struggling to find a source photo that would work in monotone. I eventually found one of Beth that I thought might work with mainly indigo but with the odd hint or red and blue in places. So after putting down a pencil outline, I put down lots of indigo pigment in the darkest places, then added iris blue and Persian red in the mid tone areas and in places (including dark indigo places) where I wanted to change the temperature. Then I wet all the colour, with brush strokes that sculpted the 3D shapes in the body.

When I stepped back to look at the result, I wasn’t happy. I normally like lost edges but they weren’t working today. I couldn’t look at the painting and imagine all the missing bits: all I could see were wrong shapes. So I decided to add colour to all the bits I’d left white, eliminating all those hidden edges. I put sun yellow and leaf green on the highlights, then added the green in other places too. And I wet the pigment again.

And this just made things worse. The yellow is a really strong colour, leaving my figure looking acidically yellow-green. Not what I wanted at all after starting off in an indigo mood. So to neutralise the greens, I put more Persian red over them, along with some fuchsia. I also added more indigo in the shadows and made some of them bigger, looking to reclaim some of the power that the indigo had ceded. And, after wetting the pigment, leaving it to dry and rubbing off my remaining pencil marks, that was me done.

You know what? I’m not putting this one in the shop window. There re some good brush marks in places but I don’t like the colours. And so many parts of the body are confusing. I struggle, for example, looking at that white space surrounded by Beth’s left arm and understand that the left border of that shape is her hair. Then there’s her breasts, her right foot, her mouth,… No, too much is wrong with this one. I have. Horrible feeling my figure paintings are stagnating at best. Does that mean I’ve shot my bolt or does it mean I’m about to make a big leap forward very soon? I have no idea.