Nude a week 18: Man on stool, watercolour

Man, watercolour, sitting on a stool resting his elbow on his knee

I like the yellow light on the arms and chest and the head in shadow with the man looking down at the floor.  I like the loose painting which was done very quickly with a big brush.

My ebook cover work

This week I have been working on some ebook covers for books on the first world war by my father in law.  All artwork done digitally. Here is the first one: a biography of Sassoon, more about this next week.

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

Nude a week 14:Two Ipad paintings - a nude woman and a twisted tree

Backview painted on ipad

I painted several ipad pictures yesterday,.  Here are two of them.  One a nude, the other an old twisted oak in the New Forest.  Both were painted with Brushes the first of the ipad painting aps.

The nude: Painted yesterday (Feb 17) using Brushes.  First I laid a lime yellow ground using the paintpot (which fills an area with colour).  Then I quickly drew the model from life using using a dark brown line.  Finally I added highlights using the eraser which took the picture back to white. The model was sitting on a pile of cushions.  The picture took about ten minutes.

The tree: This is an old oak with a spina-bifida type problem.  It only holds branches on one side, they twist excessively and tend to droop to the ground on one side.  The branch to the left then picks up strength and moves upwards.  There are two trees next to each other that are doing this sort of thing although the  other one has lost most of its trunk this winter, presumably blown down by a gale. This tree has coins embedded in the bark, we wonder if this is connected with the problem.

Does anyone out there know what causes this this strange twisting?  If you do get in touch!

 A strange twisted oak in the New Forest England

Nude a week 13: Exuberant dancer

Dancing woman captured in charcoal

The model danced around exuberantly as I captured some of the fleeting poses in charcoal.  We were both having real fun.

Nude a week 12: Standing girl, leaning against a wall - pastel

Girl standing pastel on olive paper

This is a pastel I drew in 2014.  I like the bright light I have got on her shoulder, breasts and thigh, and the shine in her hair. Olive pastel paper is a good choice for a colour nude.  I let the paper shine through as a colour; see the hair, the shoulder and the nearer leg.