Sunday 13 March 2011



A lot of times when you paint or draw you are just treading water, doing what you already know, but with this one I really feel I learnt something. I used 5 colours, transparent red oxide, yellow ochre, black, Kings blue Light (a favourite of mine, available from Michael Harding) and white. I started out on the wrong foot and wiped it and found that the red oxide made a wonderful orange stain on the board. I used this as a base colour for the body and built up the tones with more oxide and white and rubbed into the oxide further to produce a transparent effect in the skin. As it is a tonal painting, I should have painted the floor in tones of red, but gave in to the real colour. Perhaps I shouldn't have,but all in all I think it is reasonably successful and will pursue this colour scheme for my quickies, (quick in this case being about 2 - 3 hours.)
A word about the model and pose. Jenny volunteered to do this standing pose with a slight twist for three hours,(!)(with breaks) and at the end earned a spontaneous round of applause from the artists! She said she likes to actively contribute to the sessions with her poses and not just flop about on a mattress, perhaps something other models could do with taking note of!

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Four quickie pencil studies

These were done in the class between seeing students. About 2 minutes each, although the top one was worked on throughout the evening. Could become a painting....