Saturday, November 30, 2013

Window Work

watercolour 2 x A4

The end of November finds me nowhere near any finished pieces after a highly productive October. As ever, however, there is always the Window Work.

Previous Window Work posts have always featured individual drawings extracted from the A4 sheets, but as my success rate per sheet seems to be improving, I thought I’d show you what they look like unedited. Each A4 is probably about 30 minute’s worth, usually - but not always – as a warming-up exercise before the easel stuff.

There are a couple of obvious duds here – the mother and schoolgirl on the left, and the incomplete ones on the right. Either I got them wrong from the start, or time or memory ran out. There are a few good ones though, like the hoody boy and blond girl, who do have the weight and poise of their subjects. Payne’s Grey is still my preferred colour for these monochromes (years ago I used Indigo), but I’ll very occasionally combine it with other colours – in this case Sepia, and a touch of Prussian Blue in the lower left.

It’s all about practice though, and the important business of maintaining - and if possible improving – looking and drawing skills. The current oil pieces seem to be including more figures, and they would probably be much more of a challenge without these (almost) daily exercises.

And, yes, I’m well into the three hundreds now - and counting…