Kaleigh

Kaleigh
Oil on panel, 11x14

This is my second workshop day and my first figure painting from life!  I liked the angles of the full pose, so I jumped right into painting the whole figure.  I thought to myself, "This is going to be a piece of cake.  By painting the whole figure, I will be putting less detail into all of the masses - so this will go quickly!"  Silly me!  What was I thinking?  By doing the whole shabang, I opened myself up to ALL those masses - and all those values within each mass.  The focus of the day was values, so I worked more diligently at marking the darkest darks and lightest lights.  I felt I was much stronger at the values in all masses except the skin, and I had to push myself when it came to the darks!  So, tomorrow, I am going to consciously lay in the darks of the skin much more effectively from the get-go!  Another challenge for today was the actual mapping of the figure.  There is so much more measuring with a whole figure than a head and shoulder.  I normally just start at the top and draw down from there.  But today, I marked the top, bottom and right edges where I wanted the composition to sit, and worked all measurements out from there.  I love being challenged, and feel like I really learned something today!  This is painting number 421 in as many days.