It's my birthday and the front page headline on stash news is that I’m going…
Mika M, In Action
How about some figure drawing in oil pastel? I’ve tried it once before, here, without success but that was when I’d only just got the watercolours and was gently shading the paper with the side of the pastel. I’m different now. I know some oil pastel techniques and think that they could work with figure drawing. So I’m going to have a go. Today’s model is Mika M, making her second appearance.
I started off with a rough drawing in pencil. Then I added the colour by dabbing in lots of spots, generally obeying the rule of three that says that each area of colour needs at least three colours in it. I left some big white areas, something that I keep wanting to do with the inktense pencils but rarely achieve. I used blues, greens, yellows and a bright red. This is what I ended up with:
This actually already looks pretty cool and it might have been worth stopping here (maybe I will stop here another time) but that was never the plan. I wanted to smooth out the pastel marks with my finger, sculpting out some bodily curves. So that’s what I did next. Just like wetting the inktense pencils, this is the fun stage but the difference with the pastels is that I had a vague idea what to expect.
I only did two more things to the painting. One was to add a little white in places to lighten up some areas that could have done with highlights. This wasn’t particularly effective. The second thing I did was to leave some messy green fingerprints, first all over the white areas in the body and then all around the body. The fingerprints around the body have given it a sense of movement, which I like.
The worst thing about this one is Mika’s left shoulder, which doesn’t quite look right. Last time, it was Mika’s right shoulder that caused problems. But there’s so much to like about this one. She’s going up for sale. To see the price, click here.
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