Gestural AnaIv

I was in the mood to take some risks today, so I thought I’d have a go at a technique recommended by Bill Buchman in Expressive Figure Drawing. What he does is to effectively lay down a rough stick figure in ink, then go round it afterwards with outlines (including missing outlines) in some sort of pencil.  The pencil outlining is often at odds with the ink underdrawing.  The idea is to inject some spontaneity into the drawing at the expense of accuracy.

I varied slightly form this by doing the stick figure in inktense pencils rather than ink, then wetting it, then outlining in another inktense pencil.  As a model I picked AnaIv again – this pose exuded energy so seemed like a good idea.

Execution-wise there are pros and cons.  The energy is there and there are some interesting lines.  It’s good that the outlines don’t match up to the underdrawing.  On the other hand, I got carried away with the underdrawing, ending up with something that was roughly the right shape before the outlines were added when what I really wanted was a stick figure.  The lines that were supposed to hint at a face are pretty bad too.

Still, an interesting work.  It’s up for sale.