Standing Nude

This afternoon I spent an amazing two hours in my studio, with a pieve of plywood about 3 feet tall, which I'd already primed, painting this standing nude.
I decided only to depict the right side of it, and I looked up mixing flesh tones in the colour book I'd been given for my birthday, and used the red and blue to mix the background, and from that, move into the flesh tone mix for the lightest areas.
Towards the end I used my fingers to smooth the skin areas, and I looked at the painting in a mirror a few times to check what I'd done.
Again, I'm amazed at how much I enjoyed the whole process, even the slow squaring up at the beguinning in charcoal. I'm now happy with the skin tones, and I want to look more at my next model to gaugue the colours on the shadows, instead of making them up.
I'm very happy with the head, right arm and left leg. I'm still rubbish at feet, because I'm avoiding them.

Pastels rediscovered

Here's more of my work from my figure photos. The statuesque poses remind me of some of Lucian Freud's work. I'm not interested in the skin textures though, it's the musculature that is exciting me-the tenseness in the lower legs, the shoulders and lower back.

I want to draw from life though, as I still think these drawings look slightly 'dead' and 'flat'. I thought this yesterday, and then Lisa made a similar comment. Thanks Lisa - how can you see inside my head like that?

I've looked on other people's art blogs and found that a happy medium is to make preparatory drawings from life, with a couple of reference photos taken after, then back to the studio with both. The preliminary sketches capture what the artist 'saw' in the scene, and they'll refer to the photo occasionally, but work mainly from the drawings done in situ. This is a way of keeping the life in the painting.

Mel also suggested working really big. I have a compressed charcoal stick that is as thick as my thumb, which is wonderful to use. I must remember what my cousin Amy said, to draw with my whole arm, not just using fingers and wrists.

Male nude

Using an 8B pure graphite stick, I rendered these using only tones, working from photos I took recently.

Choosing a starting point I working my way round the figure, accentuating shadow in one place, leaving bare paper in others. It's nice to work in a medium I'm familiar with, but in a new way; tonally rather than 'drawing lines'.

I drew on cheap watercolour paper as it has a good 'tooth' to pick up the graphite, and it allowed fair amount of re-working before the surface texture flattened.

Yes, I think I am happy with these and, as usual, I now want to work these figures on a larger scale.