Just Believe In Me Baby And I’ll Take You Away

After Galen went so well earlier this month, I thought I’d have another go with the Artgraf blocks. This time, though, it’s a figure painting. The model is Avaette, making her debut. I picked a pose that would have lots of lost edges in it.

I created a three value plan using the Notanizer app and marked everything up on the paper with a pencil. I went over all the darks with the sanguine block, then both the darks and lights with the yellow ochre. This might have been enough pigment but I wanted to make things more interesting, so I added what I thought were tiny bits of green, blue, red, magenta and brown in a few places. I tried to use darker colours to bring out the nipples and some of the darker shadows. With the green, I barely touched the paper, just trying to slightly cool down some of the highlights on the right.

Then I wet all the pigment, using a tiny brush and trying to allow the colours on the paper to mix. I managed to get some great soft edges between the darks and the mid tones but my edges between the mid tones and the highlights are quite hard in places.

Stepping back from the painting, the greens that I’d added looked over the top, so I added some sanguine on the right to warm things up: previously there had only been mid tones there, so there was no red, only yellow and green.

I’m happy with the final painting and it’s up for sale, with the price to be found here. There are still things that I could have done better though: I’ve l ready talked about softer edges next to the highlights and less green. But the head’s los a bit weird and when it comes to framing this one, I’ll be losing more at the top of the painting than at the bottom.