Page 66

June 2012

For this one I selected a pose from a book called “The Nude Figure – A Visual Reference for the Artist” by Mark Edward Smith (page 66 if you want to follow along at home), and the first two hours were spent on the line drawing. My raw materials were three or four graphite pencils and a sheet of 9X12 65 lb Canson sketch paper.

#1

The face has a bit more finish than the rest of the body at this stage, since if I was going to royally screw up the likeness, I wanted to find that out early. As it was, I was satisfied with it.

#2

The next day, I spent one and a half hours hatching in some shadow shapes. I adjusted the position of her right hand and the shape of her right breast.

I had to take a couple of nights off before I got back to it. During that time, I was imagining all the creative things I could do to screw this drawing up before I was finished. I briefly considered signing off on it as it was, but decided to press my luck.

#3

The next hour was spent lightly blending the shadow shapes and adding in some of the background. I also tried to fix her left eye, which had been bugging me.

#4

Heading for the home stretch now, I started adding darker layers, and basically spent the next two hours blending. I topped it off by adding some highlights to her hair and other bright spots with my eraser.

#5

I thought I was done! But no, I wasn’t happy with the dark line under her left arm, and the tone of the shadow on the inside of her thigh. So away I went again.