Figure Paintings

Here are some of the figure paintings I've done this semester for Zhaoming Wu's class. The first few are pretty bad, but I'm posting them to show progression and all.



The first 2 week pose was done in monochrome, we had to focus more on anatomy and modeling. This one came out alright, just a little dark.



Another 2 week pose, this time with a full palette. Still more focus on structure, since the first 2 poses of the semester are with male models. I was also trying to push the edges and color with this, although the painting was unsuccessful in the end. One of the major color problems I was having at this point was the uniformity of the blue throughout the shadows.



This one, a 3 week pose, was under natural light. It started off alright and I thought I was achieving that really nice, delicate cool light look that I admire so much in other peoples' paintings, but it very quickly went downhill and ended up a boring, overmodeled mess. I didn't continue this one after the 2nd week, it was too far gone.



This one was a turning point for me. For the most part I finished all the major stuff in week 1, and spent the next 2 weeks fine tuning. I'm happy with how the color turned out, and I love the pose- the model's one of my favorite that I've painted so far. During this painting I also started getting the occasional compliment from Zhaoming, which is utterly surreal. As much as I like this piece, I do wish I'd pushed the lost and found edges a little more, I started off on track but tightened the whole thing as it went on.



This one was a quick study, done in around 2 and a half hours. Zhaoming basically told me I should stop working on the painting of Cecilia when I felt like it was done, lest I ruin it, so I moved to the other model. Even though it's a quick painting, I've quite happy with it- I got the cool light effect that I find so hard to achieve, I pushed more color into the skin without turning it into mud, and I stayed loose with the whole thing.

There are 3 more paintings from the semester that are still underway, I'll post them in around a week.