Luana In Inktense Pencil

The dog’s pretty well back to normal now after two bouts of illness, so I’ve been able to get back out to the studio. As is normal after a longish hiatus, I came back gently with an inktense pencil figure to blow away a few cobwebs and not make much mess. Today’s model is Luana, making her second appearance.

For the layer of colour, I used just two pencils: the sea blue and the fuchsia. These worked reasonably well together and, had I been fully match fit, might have been enough. But there were a few bits that I wasn’t happy with, so I added another layer using those same two colours plus bright blue and Persian red for variety. If anything, the painting looked slightly better.

I probably should have stopped there but I decided the darks needed to be darker and made the mistake of darkening my darks and some of my mid tones with indigo. It turned the body into a mess. Being in an impatient mood, I tried to rescue things with the original four colours before everything was dry and ended up with some funny textural marks. And then I called it a day.

This one’s a flop and isn’t going up for sale. On the one hand I’m feeling chilled because today was all about shaking off the cobwebs. On the other hand, I’m feeling guilty about throwing the inktense pencils to the lions again. It seems I only use them these days when I’m out of practice and that I never give them a fair chance of success.