NadiaR

I thought I’d just chill out today with an inktense figure painting rather than focusing on impressing Artist Of The Year judges. Today’s subject is NadiaR, making her debut on this blog. And today’s colours were deep indigo, bright blue, wild flame and sun yellow. My intention was to go for a minimalist approach and to leave as much as possible to the viewer’s imagination, so I probably should have gone for fewer colours. Maybe even gone monotone.

I put down a pencil outline using a grid, then added all the pencil marks. I started with indigo in all the darkest areas. Then I used the blue in all the midtones, including some really subtle places where I could see changes in value in the source photo. All this value observation was done using my eyes with no help from the Notanizer app. I then added the red and yellow, mainly for temperature variation in places but also to pick out a couple of light to mid tone edges where I thought the blue would have been too clumsy. Then I brushed water into all the pencil marks. After stepping back to evaluate my work, I decided to extend Nadia’s right upper arm right up to the elbow. Leaving the elbow to the imagination wasn’t working: my imagination was coming up with a stump. Anyway, after making the necessary alteration and rubbing out all the pencil marks, that was me done.

It’s not too bad, this one. Not as minimalist as I was intending, but I did end up with a lost edge along one side of the body. There’s something jarring about the head and arms, though, as if they’re the wrong size. I think it’s to do with the shadow of her face on her right arm: it confuses me a bit. Anyway, Nadia’s up for sale, with the price to be found here.