Saturday, July 11, 2009

Struggling with Nudes . . .

We've had some great models recently at Sunday life-drawing: part of the winter arrivals of various new age types coming to the desert to find themselves. I've started playing with the idea of 'nudes +', not so much giving them a face but something else of interest: featuring the tattos or the hair or the beanie they're wearing.

These two (above and below) are of the same girl: delicate looking but surprisingly strong in her ability to hold the poses for 15 minutes at a time. She's been an exotic dancer in her past, which might account for some of the strength and great lines she makes with her poses. Great tattoo, too, which, in the black and white painting, I'm toying with the idea of giving it a light wash of colour (like in old tinted photographs). We'll see.


I have finally finished this one, above (Reclining in Brown) and the last of the series below, but it was a struggle. Not sure why, just going through a "I cant paint" phase, and not particularly enjoying painting. While these two are both good enough to go into the gallery (we have a change over next weekend, so the pressure's been on), they're not exactly how I wanted them to be. Looking forward to this phase passing!
This girl is a friend of the one above. A fire-dancer and dance teacher. She has the most amazing dreadlocks, which I really wanted to paint. She also had a kind of quiet pride in all her poses, so I ended up doing a portrait that tried to convey that sense of the anthropological drawings of Amazons from the past.

I didn't want to overwork this one, but think I did a bit, which is a shame. Ah well.