MORE FIGURES IN CONTE, WATERSOLUABLE CRAYON AND WATERCOLOR

The next exercise from the book is an easy one - just mark-making on the paper.  Using a large enough sheet so you can get the movement from the shoulder, not the wrist.


Then I took that idea of mark-making and reworked some quick sketches I'd done in my figure drawing sessions - was that a year ago or more??  Gosh, time flies when you're getting old.

I liked the roundness of the figure on the viewer's right so I made the figure on the left more angular.

Since I liked the figure on the right the most, I used it to begin another painting but I began the painting by using watersoluable crayons to draw the figure on the watercolor paper.  Then I played with the drawing a bit and added watercolors with a brush and kept going back in with the crayons. 

And this is what I finished with (yes, I know that arm looks weird and is not positioned correctly but accuracy isn't what this is about right now so I'm giving myself a pass on that one).

I'm never quite sure why I use the colors I use in these - it just seems to be an unconscious choice (but I have been reading a biography of Alice Need and she outlined her figures with black and then blue marks so maybe that influenced this one).  I've got blues and yellows and ochres and pinks and oranges in the body colors.

The background is conte crayon put on while the paper there was still fairly dry, mixed with some watercolor crayon that had been wetted down and blended.  I like the vibration of it.




Did "your team" win the SuperBowl?  I watched it - but just for the commercials :)

Did you see Nancy Standlee's torn paper collages all featuring SuperBowl stuff (helmets, shoes, etc.)?  Pretty cool.