Mika M

For colours, I started with indigo in the darkest places, then graduated into violet, then fuchsia, then poppy red.  I also put in tangerine orange in some of the lightest (but not the very lightest) areas.  And I added some bright blue in a few places, because I wanted a bit of blue in some places to break up all the reds.

I used a lot of pencil today.  I was in the mood to lay down a lot of colour, even though I know my best inktense paintings are the ones where I’ve used the colour most sparingly.  Here’s what I ended up with before wetting:

I followed my usual wetting rules.  Details first with the smallest brush.  Edges and creases before expanses of flesh.  Try to follow the shape of the body with the strokes.  And where there are adjacent colours, start the stroke in the lightest colour and continue it into darker colours.

And that was it really.  The colours are great on this one.  It’s easy to forget for a minute that these are impressionistic colours and not realistic ones.  But something went wrong with the shape of her right shoulder and I only noticed this after putting down the pencil colours.  I tried to correct it before wetting but all this did was to make the shoulder look darker and muddier than the rest of the body.  The hands aren’t great either but the shoulder is the main reason this one goes down as a fail.