JenB Eyeing Rogue Spot

Up late today and the League Cup Final’s on later but I did have the time for another figure painting with the inktense pencils. Today’s model is JenB, making her sixth appearance on this blog.

I started with a four value plan using the Notanizer app but rather than putting down pencil outlines of the value shapes, I went for pencil outlines of the body, making me think about where to add colour rather than filling in shapes. I put down sun yellow in all the lights, mid tones and darks. Then Persian red over the mid tones and darks. And bright blue over the darks. The plan was to stick to these three but I decided at the last minute to add violet to the darkest of the darks.

It sounds like a posterised painting but it’s not. In a posterised painting, I let each layer dry before adding the next. In this painting I wet all the layers at the same time and encouraged them to blend, getting softer edges in a number of places than I do with posterised watercolour paintings.

I like the left hand side of this one. It’s bright, sunny and minimalist. I knew the right side would look different but don’t like how messy the darks look. If I can find the right source photos something in sun yellow and Persian red could look great. This one’s not going up for sale, though. I don’t mind the messy drip in the bottom right because Jen’s looking at it. No, the real problem is that there’s a visible grid line that I just couldn’t rub out. It’s vertical and can be seen on Jen’s back between her left arm and her bum cheeks.

I’m not having a great run with the inktense pencils and am starting to wonder whether this means there’s a big improvement just around the corner.