Figure Painting (Dustin)

[OK: ewwww!!! The photo was too discoloured - made him look sickly green.!)


Anyway, I haven't done a painting from a model in a long time, so it was time to get back to that. This was an OK start, but, yeah, it has its problems (tubular left leg, for example, and splotchy skin disease).

Some problems I had while painting this were:

1.) deciding how to represent the background. I wanted him to emerge from the shadows, which he didn't in real life, so I had to invent some of that. And I wasn't even sure what colour to make the background, which impacted my colour choice for the shadows on the skin.

2.) Well, skin colour. Partly made worse by not deciding on a background colour. But also creating excessive colour variations, such as the really pink skin on the cheeks and the greenish skin on the arms.

3.) Focusing more on the crossed arms and less on the face. I find it really difficult to "abstract" a face in order to focus attention elsewhere. (In this case, on the crossed arms.) I pretty much blew it here, but that's what practice is for.

Anyway, this was a good jump back into painting the figure, even if it isn't wildly successful. I haven't decided whether to keep this one (and possibly rework it?) or else paint over it. Don't have to decide for a while, though. Like until I move or run out of canvas. (I AM tempted to touch it up, but without the model, it may be a futile exercise, as I won't have the information in front of me.) At any rate, it got me ready for the next figure painting, which was somewhat more successful.