Thea’s Back

More angular figure drawing and today’s model was Thea.

You know the drill by now. Ā Put down the drawing with lots of straight lines, put on lots of colour either wherever I can see it or wherever I fancy, then burnish it at the end by putting on one last coat pushing the pencil down hard to flatten the paper.
Today I was feeling quite value focused. Ā I started by putting down lots of Prussian blue in the darkest places, but as more and more paint was added, this dark showed up less and less. Ā So when the burnishing stage came (and after burnishing the hair in sepia) I started with a dark grey in the darkest areas. Ā I tried to give these areas a hard straight edge on one side but to lessen the burnishing away from that edge so that it could blend into lighter burnishing elsewhere. Ā I was less than happy with this, so went over the grey with black along the straight edges, blending it into the grey. Ā That looked a bit better.
I then finished off by:
– burnishing the blanket in cream,
– shading in a blue background that varied from cool blues at ethe top to warm at the bottom, and
– adding black outlines on left facing edges and helioblue reddish outlines on the right facing.
And the final verdict? Ā The black shadowy shapes are a bit too colourless for my tastes and the right shoulder blade is bothering me a little. Ā But the blue, red, yellow and green colours all worked out nicely – that side of things is definitely improving. Ā The pinch on the left of Thea’s waist is good – the pinch is something I always include and that’s vital to an6 figure drawing. Ā And there’s a consistency between the angle of the head and the angle of the background pencil strokes that makes it look as if Thea is staring directly into a rain shower. Ā This one is definitely going up for sale. To see the price, click here.
About four or five months after posting this, I realised the model was Thea, not Katya. Ā Now corrected.

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