6 Hour Pose, June 9th Day 2

Ugh, that face! I need to redo it somehow but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it. The gesture is great, and although the face is too small, it's ok. The skin tone could have been cooler but it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I'm happy with the values and the overall feel of it. The model is really great, really friendly and she was helpful with giving me some feedback. The pose ended yesterday but the model kindly offered to allow me to take photos and that's really going to help me fix and complete somethings like the leg on the left and redoing the head.

You know what I keep thinking I've sort of got that "Lucian Freud palette" going on which I've never liked. When I was going to university, the few figure paintings that were displayed had that same palette of colours with that greyish background. Then I realized that a lot of that is due to the studio set up. They've got white walls and there's usually never any other background and so you end up with a lot of mid-tones. That's also due to the fact that there's never dramatic lighting.

For my first figure painting in about 3 years (yeah...) I'm proud of it and I'm going to take what I've learned and make the next one even better. But when this one is complete, it will be in my portfolio because it definitely has potential.

6 Hour Pose, June 9th Day 1

Day 1 went much better than I was anticipating. I expected to have to finish the colour and whatever else I wanted to do today but when I got there I found out the same pose is tomorrow. That was a relief because I was able to really take my time. Started out with the imprimatura last night, which was a gamble because I really didn't know what the colours would be but looks like it's working well.

I was measuring quite a bit so the drawing took longer than I wanted but it seems to have paid off. I used raw umber plus flake white for this stage and that worked well because flake white is nice and warm, also translucent so it looks very subtle. The hand was a nice suprise. I was putting it off but when I got around to it, it looked really good. The face turned out fine in the end, but I don't think I'll be getting into the eyes, just some colour maybe and highlights.

Provided everything dries tomorrow, I will be glazing in some colour and scumbling as well. I don't know how far I'll be able to take the colour but I would like to build up the paint more in certain areas. But right now it's got this quality I like about it, sort of a Flemish thing and I think I want to keep that as much as I can (keeping in mind that it is a sketch at the end of the day). That's it for now, and hopefully my painting hasn't been stolen from the studio...