Thea’s Back

You know the drill by now.  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.  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.  So when the burnishing stage came (and after burnishing the hair in sepia) I started with a dark grey in the darkest areas.  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.  I was less than happy with this, so went over the grey with black along the straight edges, blending it into the grey.  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?  The black shadowy shapes are a bit too colourless for my tastes and the right shoulder blade is bothering me a little.  But the blue, red, yellow and green colours all worked out nicely – that side of things is definitely improving.  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.  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.  This one is definitely going up for sale.

Abou5 four or five months after posting this, I realised the model was Thea, not Katya.  Now corrected.