Katlyn

I put down a pencil outline using a grid for minimal assistance.  Then I dotted in lots of dark spots in the most shadowy areas and lighter spots in the lighter areas, choosing whatever colours just felt right.  And then I smoothed all the spots out with my finger and with one of the pointy rubber sticks.  That was the planned bit of the process.

The rest was tinkering.  Whenever there was too much of a colour in one area (and in this case it was too much red in Katlyn’s left arm) I would add that colour in other places or add other colours where that first colour was too dominant.  I would use dark colours to darken areas that I wanted to be more shadowy and lighten areas with white that I wanted to be lighter.  All the time, smoothing in the added colours with my fingers and sculpting the body.

Later on, I added a background by rubbing lightly with the sides of red, yellow and white pastels and smoothing it all out with a finger, this time wrapped in kitchen paper as it wasn’t so important for me to feel connected to the marks.  And that was me done.

It’s a kind of average oil pastel figure drawing for me.  Not my best and not my worst.  There are some great finger marks in there that would have Tai Shan Schierenberg drooling.  The hand behind the back isn’t great, though, and I wasn’t ever happy with the neck area.  Still, I’m putting this one up for sale.