Getting the urge to paint

It's happening to me more and more these weeks. I'm not thinking of things I see in terms of drawings, but in terms of paintings. I'm looking at colour, and depth, and shadow, not in terms of lines like I used to.

Here's my latest work. I decided to merge the line where the background meets the body form again in areas like the armpit, and really looked at the reason shadows were where they were, describing muscles.

As you can see from the stages I've photographed, I drew the form in charcoal on the white canvas, then blocked in the background first, leaving some movement in the reds & greens so as not to make it too flat, but not to distract from the body. Then I started using the same background mix, but adding a lot of yellow and put in the main highlighted areas. Then, working on the whole piece at once, moving from the back to the lower legs, to the arm, over to the back again & the buttocks....... I pulled it all together. I'll photograph it again in natural light later so you can get a better idea of the finished piece.