A Splash of Colour!

Figure drawing today was similar to last weeks as we had to paint with our fingers but this time we were using the primary colours (and white) to paint the poses. The purpose was to see colour in both the low and hightlights, I found this task because with my Irlen Syndrome my sensitivity to some colours are a little duller than others so I was a little  concerned. However the whole task was to paint what WE saw so I don't think it went to bad - I used a lot of yellow and blue and I onlu added rex when I thought i added to much of the other colours :/ 

We looked at Fauvism and Surreslist Automatic Painting for a bit of inspiration and guidence for our work - I really liked the work buy Fauvists like Matisse (surprisingly) since they used such bright and expressive colours.

First Attempt and Painting with Three Colours 

I tried to add more paint and colour to this one - it looks a little too much, its the worst observation of the lesson.

We also did a bit of class reflection, I looked at others work to see what they did better and what I could improve on, but also what I liked about others work. Cameron's was the first that I liked - I really liked the controll that he showed when using the three colours, the seperation between the colours is very clean and I can clearly see where the darks and lights are in the observation. 

Cameron's

I really like how Amy using the paint on her observation, how she blended the colours with white and other colours to make it lighter. Also Amy used a minimal amount of paint compared to Cameron's and mine but it is just as effective in creating a readable and interesting painting.

Amy's

I really like how Millie was able to draw/paint this figure pose so well (jealous) I like how she had used almost flicking finger motions with the paint to blend the colours together.

Millie's

Next set of observation paintings we had more freedom to do what we wanted to do, and since I liked the look of the sketches that I did with paint and charcoal so I combine the new paint scheme and charcoal and I liked how it looked. (Though the foot looks like a mitten- oops!)

This was the first reclining pose that I have done, but the legs look bigger then they are supposed to be but that was the perspective that I viewed the pose from but it still just doesn't look right, I also liked how I managed the arrange the colours in the figure.

Since I sent 20 minute on the previous the observation so I went back to the chalk and charcoal from last week and did a quick observation - I again found that the leg looked out of proportion but again that was closer to me than the rest of the body. 

The final pose was a reclining pose and was big a pain in the arse!! This is because from the angle I was painting I had to draw some areas of the body large than the others which i found very challenging since I haven’t had any practice with this kind of poses before - if I'm honest I would normally try to avoid these angles but I won't learn anything by keep doing that!!

So I did some research into Foreshortening in art and measured with the thumb-and-pencil-technique to get the proportion size correct so I'd know where to put the end of the foot and how large to do the size to do the size of the body that was closest to me.

My first attempt at drawing the pose without any sort of structure didn't go too well and looked as if the body was hanging and didn't bear  lot of resemblance to the actual pose - but the second pose was a lot better that had the angle and depth to it.

First sketch 

Sketch after measuring

I think that what I struggled to comprehend was the angle to draw the left leg - I didn't want it look like the body was hanging upside down, but layed down. But I managed to get a decent but not prefect observational painting..... I think. Lots of work to do in practicing to create depth 

Sketch after painting