Attention: This is a PG-13 post! If paintings of nude people bother you, do not read!

It’s about 4:30 on Saturday and all I can think is that I need a nap.

I got up this morning and took Key for a long walk. I came back and ate breakfast, then loaded up the car and went to the first of three figure painting session I have signed up for in August (more about this later). Then I stopped at the farmer’s market and stocked up. And then Key and I went for ANOTHER long walk down to the Englewood Forest Festival. Putting up a blog post seems like an excess of ambition!

Still, I’d like to decompress a few of my thoughts from today’s painting.

The session was a “long pose” session where the artists and the model agree on a position and then the model returns to that pose throughout the sitting. In the three hours we worked, we got six shots of capturing the pose.

I spent the first period working with charcoal and newsprint to get warmed up.

There are about half a dozen other little studies (and mistakes) that I’m not showing here. Of course, me being me, it wasn’t long before I was moving on. It’s worth nothing that I am the only one in the group who did more than sketch, but what really amazed me is that they only did one sketch. Three hours for one sketch is… a long time.

I was initially quite taken with the idea of painting the negative spaces.

But soon I wanted to work with her skin tones.

I started this one without a clear idea of the intent and I think it shows.

Her feet and legs were in such pretty positions, with lovely light that I did a little study.

Then I decided to go for it and not care that well, part of her anatomy was right in the way of what I wanted to paint.

I was getting tired by now and pondering what else I’d like to work on. It occurred to me that I always find faces hard in other paintings. So…

And then the session was up.

Next week I’d like to work on two areas. The first is a more subtle preservation of light. The second is less reliance on line to solve problems.