Tag Archives: nude

Landscape, Nude, Still Life

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Did three more small paintings over the weekend.  The nude was the most difficult again.  If you ignore the weird face and the misshapen hand on the right I’m happy with it.

The landscape was fine, just an exercise to jump start me painting.

The still life was done fast and poorly and was so offensively uninteresting that I wiped it off as soon as it was done.

Cloud Study : Oil on board. 8″x10″ 2016
Nude Study : Oil on board. 8″x10″ 2016
Crappy painting that was so bad I threw it out. Oil on wood. 6″x8″ 2016

Nudie Paintings beware!

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This weekend I spent a bunch of time tackling skin tones.  I painted four figure studies and what I have come away with is : Skin tones are HARD!

Almost every single time I mixed a color on my palette to what I thought was an appropriate, pale, neutral skin tone that same color looked like garish clown makeup on the actual painting.

Overall, though, the process moved from clumsy, to awkward, to frustrating, and finally landed on “…meh.”  On the last attempt I switched from Ti White which had been making things a big chalky mess over to Flemish and Flake whites.  This helped enormously in brightening the colors without flattening them. It’s a shame that a tiny tube of Flemish white costs 3X the giant tube of Ti.

Last attempt and the best of you ignore the face. Oil on board 8"x10"

Last attempt and the best of you ignore the face. Oil on board 8″x10″

First attempt. Somehow in focusing on the colors I forgot how anatomy works. Oil on board 8"x10"

First attempt. Somehow in focusing on the colors I forgot how anatomy works. Oil on board 8″x10″

Third attempt. Starting to understand that colors are good. Oil on board 8"x10"

Third attempt. Starting to understand that colors are good. Oil on board 8″x10″

Second attempt. Better with the anatomy, colors are a chalky mess. Oil on board. 8"x10"

Second attempt. Better with the anatomy, colors are a chalky mess. Oil on board. 8″x10″

More old stuff

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It’s 9:30 on a Thursday and I’m having a glass of wine and listening to some music (The Album Leaf) and sifting through some old drawings I had scanned to see what’s worth posting.  I have dozens and dozens of sketchbooks filled with old figure drawings but I feel like throwing some naked men up on the screen is a cheap way to drive traffic.

So cheap it is!

I used to attend a figure drawing session nearby that was borderline legit.  Which was fine, some of the sketchiness (no pun intended) appealed to me, and the models were generally very good.  Unfortunately the host of the group let it devolve into a shit-show, so I ended up not returning.  However, I did get some good drawings, including one of my favorite models: Edward.  I have some sketch pages of him, and a nice finished drawing that is very reminiscent of the Barberini Faun.