The penultimate session

Last week I started to work on an invented background for my painting, as the room lacked ambience. Once home I spent some time trying to improve on the colours and build more interest to the painting as a whole.

First thing was to correct the position of the right leg. I was still struggling to get the thickness of my paint as I wanted, and it always seemed to come out too thin even with medium. Never mind I told myself, I can always let it dry and add more layers.

And so, that’s what I did. At least by the time I’d put the canvas aside I could say that I almost liked it. But there was a way to go.

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From sketch to canvas process

Continuing on from last week, when I showed you the charcoal sketch (see above) which I would be transposing onto an A2canvas. As I am going to take you through that process I thought it would help to include it here as this is the pose I shall continue to work from.

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The next phase: sketching towards a painting

Week Three. In this session we were to work on A2 paper, using pencil or charcoal for our preparatory sketch. No photocopies this week. The model Lulu is similar in build to the figure we had copied in Goldie’s work – the idea being, we were told, was to execute a painting in tones similar to the one we had copied. But first, the pose needed working out, and so a few minutes were spent moving a stool, arranging a cushion, and having the light in an appropriate position to suit both the model and the class. We would be working with this same pose for three weeks. Hard on the model I thought.

I was pleased to be using my favourite drawing medium for this stage. Charcoal is such a forgiving medium and I just love the nuance of tone it allows one.

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The last stages

I worked a little on the painting yesterday, and this is the image here. I left it to dry overnight and returned to it today.

I will work on it a little tomorrow and hopefully it will be done.

I should have waited until the paint had dried to take the photo as every brush stroke is laid bare (unintentional pun).

I have decided to trim the image and focus on the model and not include the barely discernible chair at the periphery of the scene in the original. I think this format works better in my view.

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