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Saturday, May 10, 2014

Nude Leaning

Nude Leaning   watercolor/mixed   12.25 x 9.5

We hired a life model a couple of weeks ago for class painting.  My painting was fairly regular in its description...but the work lacked pizazz.  First I experimented with painting a loose, mid-value background.  Still pleasing.  Still boring.  I wanted texture to oppose the smoothness of the model's skin.  I wanted opacity to oppose the transparency of the figure.  After cutting a template to cover the figure, I used relief ink to print onto the background area.  The small dots were actually happy accidents....bits of dried ink that stuck to block and prevented total coverage.  What a hoot!

Experimentation doesn't always work out well.  But it always provides a thrill!