December shimmied past without a hint of artistic nudity, so it wasn't until we were well into January that I managed to get over to Edinburgh for some life drawing. My god, to think there was a time I used to do this weekly! Now I can barely manage a month. Better than none at all, but it makes it hard to progress, to experiment, at any more than a glacial pace.
So, female model this time around, strong curves and good dynamic quick poses made for some satisfying charcoal sketches:
Getting there, if verrrrry slowly. Following the same pattern of the last few sessions (a rut? or reliable?) I broke out the oil paints for slightly longer poses and they worked quite nicely - I was particularly pleased with these two:
For a change, I kept the oil paints out for the longest pose of the day at the end - practically, it's a risky move since it means the painting will still be very wet while I'm travelling back home, but it's satisfying to use the oils for a larger and more sustained piece than the above A5 painted sketches. I stuck with the same colour scheme of naples yellow, ochre and burnt sienna, plus some white, and focused on the top half of the model to try and capture that sense of a voluptuous figure at rest. And while I think it could've done with another hour or two to do it justice (I'm particularly frustrated with how the shadows turned out) I think it's basically there.
I'm glad I stuck with the oils for the longer pose, even though there was some inevitable smudging on the way home, and might try and do the same again next time - especially if I can fashion some kind of device for carrying wet paintings without getting smudged. The fact I'm using canvas paper, rather than boards or box canvases, makes it that bit trickier, but here's a homemade option worth exploring. A large pizza delivery box might be the answer, but would that leave my work with a peculiar whiff of oregano? And would that be so bad?
(As usual, to see all of the work from the session I didn't destroy, pop over to Flickr and start from here).
