Nude of the week 17: Standing woman with tattoo.

Standing woman dark brown pastel with tattoo

Here I`ve used the soft smudgy quality of the pastel with my fingertips in the halftones. This is a quick study of Alexandra.

Nude a week 16: A seated nude painted on the Ipad with a video replay of the painting

Jill side view. Short pose. The model leans forward engrossed in activity at the left.  The left leg is stretched forward steadying her.  I used a limited palette of 5 or 6 colours.  Also the eraser was used to make the pen lines. For this painting I used the Brushes app.

Here with a short pose, I think of first the main sweep of the pose and put it in.  I take in the negative space of the wall and its shape.  I chose colours and their complimentaries.  I'm aware of patterns like the large pattern on the lower left.  For this picture I was thinking of flat colour and not the nuances of flesh colour.  You can watch the process of painting re-played at high speed on the Ipad.  Here is a video we made from the replay. Apologies for the quality, we have yet to master the process of recording the video on the Ipad.

The wall was not the orange colour shown.  I painted it using the complementary of the blue-greens of the blanket on the lower left.  I limit my palette when I see the possibilities of  a lithograph and I saw that here.

PS: To complement my blog my husband is putting up a blog with a Poem a week,  It is here at this link http://njeanius.blogspot.co.uk/

Nude a week 15: Nude on a fresco tile

A lime fresco of a seated nude painted on a roof tile.

Here's a back seated view painted as a small fresco on a roof-tile about 11 inches by 5 inches (28x12 cm). It was painted as a lime fresco using pure pigments. The colours used were ochre, burnt umber and Prussian blue, used in a translucent way. The colour of the pure lime plaster shows as a soft white mainly across the shoulders and buttocks. All three colours are used wet in wet making subtle cool and warm flesh tones. All painting is done while the lime plaster is wet.

Frescoes should not fade or darken. The colour is fused into the wet plaster. As the plaster dries it binds the colour and the colour becomes permanent. Frescoes can last for over 1,000 years.

I originally painted this picture in Grass Valley, California. You can see more about my fresco work in an earlier blog Jeanie paints frescoes.  Below is a picture of the sort of roof tile I used and another example of my fresco work - a picture of a camellia flower from the lovely tree in our garden that is flowering at the moment..

For those who want to try frescoes there is more info and a chance to buy instruction DVDs at www.frescoschool.org/

A fresco I did of a camellia flower

 

 

 

The sort of roof tile used for the fresco