Michael In Oil Pastel

June’s been busy and my artwork has slows down to a crawl: this is only my fourth painting of the month and we’re already at the 16th. And the busier I am, the more likely I am to be painting figures whenever I get the chance to venture out to the studio. It might be because they’re quicker than portraits or landscapes or it might be because they’re easier. Either way, they’re a gentle way back in after a few days off and, with there being lots of cricket and football on at the moment, this might be a month where I paint a lot of figures.

I thought I’d have a go at a male figure for a change and picked a pose by Michael. I was shocked to find that this is his fourth appearance on this blog: there can’t be that many female models that have reached those lofty heights. And I went for oil pastels as I was in the mood for some crazy colours. I’m finding that with the aircon on, oil pastels are becoming increasingly practical during the summer and not melting all over me.

I started with a basic pencil outline, using a grid. Then I went for the impressionistic colours: lots of spots of warm colours on the left and cool on the right, trying to put down darker colours in the most shadowy areas. With these spots of colour as a good starting point, I then dotted in more realistic flesh colours around them. And then I blended the colours using colour shapers to ensure that my colours went right up to the edges of my pencil outlines.

At this point, I could probably have stopped but decided to carry on. Oil pastel paintings can improve with tinkering after reaching a decent stopping point, unlike watercolours where a decent stopping point is the place to stop, with further tinkering only likely to ruin the painting.

So I continued, adding more colours. I can’t remember the order in which I made these changes but I tried to brighten things up with some yellows, make highlights lighter with whites and warm up the right and cool down the left after deciding the temperature gradient was a bit too steep. Throughout the tinkering stage, I blended colours with polystyrene chips, trying to “sculpt the figure”. Eventually I got to a point at which I couldn’t see any reason to tinker further. So that was me done.

It’s not too bad, this one. I like the colours: there are some interesting orange/blue complementary clashes in there. And the odd bit of smudging here and there adds more energy. The delineation of muscle shapes on the back feels a bit unclear to me but ChatGPT disagrees and thinks it’s great. Michael’s good enough to go up for sale, with the price to be found here.