Swishy Hair Sketchbook Saturday

teen girl caught mid hair flip

prismacolor in my sketchbook

There's a park close to my house that is one of our favorites. It has a duck pond, two huge playgrounds, swings, one of those metal merry go round death trap things (yay. . . said no one ever), endless grassy fields and trees, and something that really appeals to me, le artiste, a high school just around the corner.

There are endless subjects for smitten paintings and other great figure paintings. Which is something I really want to focus on more, even though I find it challenging. It's hard to focus on detail so much in my close ups and then switch to the bigger picture and suggestion for figure paintings.

But I'm working on it.

I loved that I caught this girl flipping her hair around to impress the boy who walked along side her. Heh. That's so something I would have done too.

Happy Saturday everyone!

Enkindle - SOLD

Enkindle

6" x 6" watercolor

 SOLD

photo reference by Chris Willis (tibchris on flicker)

I've been on the lookout this year for new faces to paint. I've had sessions with two fantastic models (and by models I mean daring friends who graciously agreed to undergo the torture of posing for me. Thanks guys!), I went to a live figure drawing session with a real life ballerina (awesomeness!), AND I have gathered up a serious bunch of courage, intestinal fortitude, what have you, and have started asking people I randomly meet on the street if they'd be interested in modeling for me.

As surprising as it may seem, this last tactic has so far proven highly ineffective. Of course this may have something to do with the fact that I am all babbling awkwardness when I approach them and say something like, "Hey, you have a very paintable face, wanna pose for me?" to which they politely say "HECK no crazy lady!" while internally they are running away screaming.

True story.

I've also been searching through photos online that allow artist's to use them for paintings. And that's how I found this beautiful girl.

She reminded me of a character from one of my all time favorite books (I happen to have a lot of those), she has lovely, expressive features, and a mysterious kind of look that makes me wonder what has captured her attention. Doesn't it make you wonder too? 

And here's a pic of one of my figure drawings. We worked in short sessions (I had to leave before they did a long one), this drawing was around ten to fifteen  minutes. I'm not exactly sure since I spent the first ten minutes procrastinating out of fear looking at the model and figuring out the best way to get started. It's been a loooooong time since I've drawn the figure from life, except for those rare occassions when I've convinced my husband and kids to hold still for me for two minutes. Which is really not the same. :)

ballerina study

charcoal on newsprint

See you next week everybody! Huzzah!!