EvaE

I came in today with two objectives, both around reverting back to techniques that I’ve used successfully in the past.  The most important one of these was to apply the water using a sculpting mindset rather than a colouring in mindset.  There was definitely some progress on this front, most noticeably on the shoulders but also the breasts and left arm.  The legs and right arm aren’t quite there yet.  Still, there’s a big improvement.

The other objective was to use a lot less colour and show a lot more white.  This didn’t work out so well but if I can keep sculpting shapes rather than colouring them in, I’m a little less concerned about using too much colour.

The colours today were bark, violet, iris blue, poppy red and leaf green.  I keep finding myself drawn towards that left arm and at how the green and blue work well together.  Green, blue and bark are a definite winning combination.  If red or purple are to be added to this, they need to be added in very tiny ways.

Where this one suffers, though, is in the proportions.  Even though I used a grid method to get the shapes down, the waist and hips look much too narrow.  That’s even after I applied some artistic license to widen the hips and to tip the waist up slightly more sharply.  Notice, by the way how the waist and hips tip in the opposite direction to the chest.  That’s called contraposto and it’s pretty essential to figure drawing.  Anyway, yeah, the waist and hips look too narrow.  Or maybe the waist and hips aren’t the problem and it’s just that the right side of the body below the breast needs to be a bit narrower.  I’m still not sure.  Hands aren’t great either.  What did work in the original drawing, though, is the twist in the body, with Eva’s right shoulder thrust forward.  The success there is partly down to making the shoulder a bit bigger but also to me adopting that sculptor’s mindset.

Overall, though, this is a marginal fail so won’t be going in the shop window.  Bad hands, bad proportions.