Acrylic on stretched canvas frame
60 X 60 X 4 cm

At one stage I used to sketch and paint a lot of nudes.  Painting nudes can be a bit daunting and I have always struggled with getting the angle and proportion of the head correct.  Now no longer in the Middle East where one has to be careful about nude studies and hanging them in your home I can now start exploring the human figure again.

In amongst my commissions and supplying various stores with consignment work I would like to start working at life studies again.  My idea is to work on exercises to suggest the accurate form of a figure in a few bold strokes.  To do this I need to analyse and understand what I am observing in order to reduce the body’s complex architecture to a succinct rendering of tones, to train the eye to distinguish the many aspects of colour, and to recognise how human beings naturally hold themselves: depicting an understanding of the underlying skeleton and muscles is often essential if a figure is to be convincingly represented.

The bellow effort was a start, one where for once it looks like I did get the proportion and angle of the head correct! 🙂  My daughters observation of my efforts were, “Mom she looks like she has been abused!” And here’s me thinking I am constructing the shape of the figure by observing the light and colour on the flesh (with a little artistic license).  Definitely back to the drawing board….