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| January Nude pastel/paper 19.75 x 8 |
Our club's first model session of the new year was last Wednesday night. Although I have stayed away from these sessions for a while, I definitely needed a jump start in the creative department after the long holiday hiatus. And nudes are usually not my favorite. Although there is much to be learned about the human body, I find them full of void, and not quite as interesting. I came prepared with a nice slice of watercolor paper and some pastels from my Yarka sauce collection. The model provided a wonderful classic pose and extreme concentration. My thrill comes from the playing with the hard and soft edges....deciding which shapes to sublimate. With white paper and light warms, I realized that it would be the darks that would lead the eye around the figure. Originally, the darks were stroky, wild and black. At home, I softened the darks with a greenish-gray that seemed, to me, more appropriate to the softness of the skin, the pose. Broken dark reddish-brown line-work was added at the end to play off of the greens.
My friend Greg had a different problem to solve. He was working on a gray toned paper. In his case, it was the lights that did the leading.
One pose. Many possibilities.
