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Saturday, January 12, 2013

January Nude...a study in pastel

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.