Acrylic and a little bit out of hand

This was my first try with acrylics and the drawing was fine but then I was faced with the problem of how do you keep the drawing when you paint.  Apparently you can paint in the lines, use charcoal which is darker or build up in layers 'thin to thick' but I just went for thick right away, and the effect is certainly striking if a little overly spontaenous!  Had great fun with the one thing that was under control, the colour, because I was only using alizarin crimson and one shade of blue with white, although I learned never to walk away and come back with acrylics, it's dry by then.  Oh, and that alizarin crimson is very very strong!

Coloured paper is lovely

There's something really nice about drawing on coloured paper.  This week I was fascinated by the hands of the model so got myself up close and worked with white pastel on grey paper and really enjoyed myself, my only issue was fixing it, I used hairspray and it, well, dribbled a bit, so I think I need to buy the real thing.  There goes this month's pocket money!

Watercolour in sepia

Another first, this time working in varying intensities of ochre on watercolour, learning how to build up glazes to create depth of colour, very much first steps.  This lovely lady is much less podgy and more beautiful than the picture suggests, slowly developing confidence with drawing.  What strikes me is how long everything takes, I get totally absorbed and the time has gone just like that.  I'm finding that ears are much bigger than I thought they were, I guess I tend to judge the size of the organs of their face by the importance of the function, so eyes would come first.

Drawing and Painting

Am slowly taking my first steps in the big world of drawing and painting, am really enjoying it but am a bit lost in the world of materials and techniques.  I'm going to a Thursday night class at Duncan of Jordanstone and we have someone sit which gives a chance to do life drawing, not the naked kind!, and that's challenging and great.  This picture was worked in pastels on untreated canvas, a very rough surface, the proportions are a bit iffy but working big allows you to free up the hand