Kayleigh's Canvas. Life Drawing.: Week 6 Life Drawing Session 5: Tone and Wet and Dry Media.

12.11.16

For this life drawing session, we were attempting to create tone using colour. This was probably my favourite session so far, simply because I love using paint and because it really challenged me to use it in a new way. Paint is different to pencil in the way that it is less forgiving, so if you make a mistake you have a harder job of covering it up; this forced me to plan more and look more at the model to make sure my proportions were correct before creating depth.

(1) shows a series of warm up drawings, these are all in pencil and took 3-10 seconds each. This exercise gave me a chance to draw without inhibition before getting into the main pieces. As you can see with the fainter drawings I did at the start, I was a bit worried about how they looked so didn't make harsh lines, then towards the centre, you see where I have become more confident and created drawings that capture the essence of the pose within a short amount of time.

(2) was still part of the warm up. Here we used charcoal and got into the habit of creating not only dark and light tone, but medium tone, and exaggerating what we saw to enhance this. Although these useful in order to get used to experimenting with tone, I can see that I wasn't as focused on proportions in these drawings. Even if correct proportion was not the focus, I should still be thoughtful of it so that I stay in the habit of creating more accurate drawings.

(3) was the first colour tone drawing we did. I chose to use a light pink, medium purple/pink and dark purple oil pastels to create depth in my piece. I was pleased with the proportions and the use of dark and light, but I think the image looks a bit flat, this is something I saw as I stood back from it on completion. I will, in future, step back from my drawing more often in order to see flaws more clearly.

(4) is my favourite piece. It conveys depth much more than any of my other pieces and has feeling to it. This may be because I am comfortable with watercolour as a medium and was more confident in creating the image, but also because I received feedback on my medium tone and responded to it; this meant that the image looked more 3D. The model looks lonely and cold because of the cool tones I have used, so I know in future to recreate that effect I can use those colours.

In contrast, I have used opposite tones for (5), swapping cold blue greens for harsh reds and oranges. With this piece I was mixing wet and dry media and so decided to practice with the mediums on the side of my paper before I began. I put some white oil pastel down and went over it with red watercolour paint; It created a bubbly effect on the pastel which I thought would work as a highlight. I also did a quick thumbnail sketch in my drawing book of the model as we had 45 minutes to complete the piece and I wanted to make the proportions accurate. Midway through the piece I received feedback to use more dry media so I added more pastel on top and it made the dark tones darker which created more depth. I don't necessarily like the result, but I think the exercise was important in experimenting with wet and dry media and getting to grips with the technique.

At the end of the session, we looked at the work of our peers and discussed paintings we found interesting. I pointed out a piece where someone had created great detail on the face using pastel, a technique I was unaware of. Someone else pointed out a piece where someone had used acrylic to thickly lay down texture on his piece, he used earthy tones and created a quite abstract view of the model. On our next session, I will be sure to bring my acrylics so that I can try this out. It is out of my comfort zone to do this, but I am excited to see what I can create using the inspiration of my peer's artwork.