Life Drawing - Week Six!

Life Drawing - Week Six - Colour!

This week we had to use a range of different coloured oil pastels to represent the body with - but we weren't allowed to use skin tones! I went on the basis that purple/ blue/ green would represent the darker tones, red/ orange the mid-tones and yellow/ white the highlights. So on my first attempt I was trying to draw with line and then working in on the shadows. However, as we were not given much time, I spent way to long on the form and didn't get chance to even get started on the tone.

15 minute sketch

Therefore, on the second go, I didn't use much line. Instead, I used the technique I used last week with the charcoal; shading in the darker areas and then building into it from there. I feel this worked a lot better and I as able to work much quicker. I decided that this week, like last week, was more about the expression rather than the complete accuracy of the piece. I quite like this piece because you can tell that it is a human form even though the colouring is completely crazy. I know there are several things wrong about the piece but I feel that is quite a good effort considering that oil pastel is really hard to rub out or change.

30 minute sketch

Having worked out what technique to use and the idea behind what we were doing, I felt a lot happier. We moved our easel positions so that we would get a different view of the body and began a new sketch. I'm quite pleased with the outcome of this one but I wish I'd been able to complete a little bit more of the rest of the body. I think the bright colours create a weird effect but it's definitely very striking.
I didn't really like using the oil pastels; I find them quite blunt, clumsy instruments to use and I don't like that they don't blend together very well. But it has been interesting using them to create this images.

20 minute sketch