Power Dressing

OK I have only made a few minor changes to the image in the end. I was going to erase a space at the bottom for a signature, but the graphite is just too thick, I would need to scrape it off and risk damaging the paper.

Re-scanned now, and the grain of the paper seems quite clear in this one.

Back to black

Now I've gone and done it. I started to add a soft background but the texture of the paper meant that I lost the line of the figure, so I needed to go really dark in the end to bring it back. In an earlier post I said that I was using the Progresso pencils but in the end I really used the B/2B carbon clutch pencils for most of the drawing, but I did do the background with the 4B and 8B Progresso. They seem to give a good dark on this bamboo paper.

I will leave this image to mature for a little while now so that I can come back and finish it with a fresh eye. Though I am not sure at this stage what else I will be able to do as I have committed with so much dark? Well I guess if nothing else changes it still needs cropping and balancing properly as the light area round the legs seems to be a result of the scanner light on the graphite layer.

I have the basic rendering of the body down now, and it is time to think about the background. As there is quite a contrast gradient in the image I will have a lock for a graded background reference, but I expect I will go for a graded tone. I am pretty please with how this has turned out, though some of the detail does seem to get lost in the soft edges produced by tooth of the paper. I chose this paper partly to give a softer finish so I shouldn't be surprised.

Cold winter night

Last night was life drawing night again, and it was cold. The snow came down really fast just before the start and we were thin on numbers this week. As you may be able to see from the post our model needed to wrap up a bit. I don't feel like I did so well with the tones this week especially with on the cloth, even though I did have the time. I guess that is the challenge of life drawing, you just need to do what you can on the day.

Top down

I am really enjoying the rendering of this image now. Due to the tendency to smudge quite a bit I need to be strict about working away from my hand, so I am working from top down left to right. All apart from the background, which I will leave to near the end to try and balance some of the tone.

Adding the extras

OK, back from a birthday party weekend and now I have added some more details to the image. I had forgotten how much graphite can smudge on this paper so I have also moved back to my B clutch pencil to finish up the line work.

It has been difficult to keep the details clear with the paper at this size. Looking back at my other pictures on this paper they have had less detail at this stage so I will just need to see how this progresses.

Fig. 1

I have now got pencil to paper, at last, on the new project. This time I am working on bamboo paper which has quite a bit of tooth, but is also hard to scan due to the texture. It is unusual paper to work with as it can take a lot of erasing while holding together really well, but at the same time is quite fragile. I need to take care not to bend the corners or dent the surface of the paper. With this paper I also like to use soft Progresso graphite pencils, which come as graphite sticks.

Again I am using one of Veronika's reference images.