Heather
 

Some Monday nights an artist friend in town has Life Drawing sessions. Heather is one of our models and she kindly allowed me to photograph her draped in her satin robe at the end of one of the sessions. This is the result of getting to know her form (from sketching her) and then using my photos later for a more serious piece.

24" x 18"
charcoal and white pastel on toned paper

Thanks for taking time to look.

Pat

Pat,

This drawing is so very lovely! Can you comment on how you feel your life sketches impacted the final portrait?

Thank you for posting.

Thank you, Chris.

I would say that sketching her a few times (with wonderful, dramatic lighting situations) I was able to familiarize myself with how she carries herself, poses and how the light plays on her skin and features. When I worked from the photo sources, I was then able to tell if I was on the right track, as I progressed, in depicting her correctly. I did deliberately change a couple of minor things to make her appear more feminine, though, but since this is mainly a portfolio piece, it's not an issue.

Pat

Awesome! Pat what can I say except awesome! Keep up the good work and the life drawings. The fun is just starting and there is more to come.

Wish you the best,
mischa

ps - as for the life drawings, next wk I am headed to the Adriatc coast and am taking my requisites with. I hope and plan to do a bunch of half hour portraits using Sepias and pastels.

Pat, this is magnificent! I love the whole thing, but especially the eye. It's so clear, innocent, and guileless. The soul you've put into this drawing seems concentrated on it, and radiates out from it.

I'm so impressed with how you managed the values. Did your experience drawing her from life help you with that? Do you feel that your camera recorded the value transitions accurately? What kind of camera did you use? I'm finding that, with my digital, I can capture a lot of detail, but sometimes the importance of certain colors is lost. I only noticed it by doing oil sketches from life and then comparing them to the photos. Certain color notes get toned down to the point that I would not have noticed them if I hadn't done the oil sketch first. I'm wondering if this translates into problems with value changes.

Thank you, Mischa. I hope you have a wonderful time at the Adriatic coast sketching!

I appreciate your comments, Alexandra, thank you. I was wondering if this piece radiated anything at all other than a lovely pose, so I welcome your remarks.
Regarding the values - I don't feel drawing her previously helped me manage this, I just kept working until it felt 'right'. My digital camera is like yours in that I don't think it captured the value transitions accurately, but close enough for me to use the images for reference. If I were going to be serious about catching the full range, I would have to take a series of pictures spot metering on the darker portions and then a series focused on the lighter ones. (As you probably already know, cameras aren't able to capture the full value range -- lights end up over exposed, or darks, under.) Together I'd be able to see the full range of values in them and then work from a cluster of photos. My camera is relatively new, (Panasonic Lumix DMC -FZ7 Ultrazoom) so I'm still finding out what it's capable of doing for me. Have you used a 35mm SLR in the past? If so, did you have better color results using it compared to your digital camera? Hmmmm...I'll have to dig through my stacks of photos and compare those from my 35mm SLR against my digital prints....

Pat

I don't mean to distract from your beautiful painting, but your concerns regarding value range are touched on in this excerpt above.

Thanks for the excerpt, Mike. I wish I could've sprung for a digital SLR, but didn't have quite enough to cover the cost of one. Oh well......maybe some day!

Pat

Pat, I have a Nikon D 50 digital. It works very well for me, and the color is magnificent if I look at the images on the screen, but prints are not as good.

Pat-- I'm late commenting on this (sorry!) . . . Just wanted to say how much I like it and especially how sensitively you've handled the light on her. Very beautifully done!