The Human Figure

We had a model one day in class, and most of my favorite paintings came from that day. I think I have so much experience with the human figure from other classes that I find it easier and less frustrating to paint that than, say, landscapes. Most of the pictures on this page are on Proart 140 lb. cold-press postcard-sized watercolor paper.

I discovered the wonders of postcard-sized pieces of watercolor paper during this class. I have this dream of sending lots of watercolor postcards in the summer of '99 when I go to Europe. This picture is of our model bending down t o smell a sunflower. (Do sunflowers have a smell?)

I've found that I usually prefer my paintings when I sketch them first with pencil. IT gives the painting a bit of definition. Especially on these quick pieces (each one of these postcard paintings took only one or two minutes), the tendency for the wet paint to bleed and the difficulty of getting precise strokes can be mitigated.

I'm pleased with the realism on this one. This painting took about ten minutes to paint, and I think I was able to get a very realistic skin tone and a nice overall setting. And I really like the texture that the paper gave to the poofy pants.

This is one of those one-minute paintings. I really like this both for the simplicity and the ambiguity. Where's her left arm? You make the call!

I really didn't like this one when I first painted it. I think I was frustrated at being forced to do the pencil marks in a way that I wasn't used to. (My teacher encouraged branching out in the style of marks we made.) Also, it's on hot-press paper, which I really struggled with at times. When I look at it now, though, I think it came out quite nicely.

For this painting, my teacher encouraged everyone to use a blue for the shadows (since blue is the complementary color of orange (and caucasian skin tone)). This was another ten-minute one, and I really like how it turned out. Man, I love figure drawing!

I really like how dynamic this one is. It reminds me of a fashion drawing. This is another one of those one-minute paintings (or maybe it was thirty seconds?), and it's the sort of painting that makes me feel like I made the right move to come to art school :)

And finally, we have this painting. Another in the series of quick postcard paintings, this is probably my favorite. Interesting, then, that it doesn't have any pencil marks. I'm a little bit nervous about actually sending this to anyone, because

• I really like it :)
• I fear that other people (who don't have the involvement in the creative proocess) wouldn't apreciate it as much as I do.

Unfortunately, the latter reason seems to dog my work. I always have insecurities about whether people will appreciate my stuff as much as I do. It's so different when you're on the inside, and you realize how much work went into it.