Friday, May 16, 2008

RECLINING NUDE


The last few weeks have been spent working on a large oil and I don't have much to show for it. So here I present this simple painting. Over the years, I have been working along on a number of different avenues, some wildlife orientated, others mostly landscape and the like. I have though, always drawn and painted the nude. While I feel that perhaps not enough personal effort has gone into this, we are what we are and art (along with life itself) can not be forced. Life drawing sessions though were arranged both in the UK and in Hong Kong, and were very enjoyable. One learns a lot during these times and the experiences are to be treasured.
In this watercolor, I wanted to concentrate solely on the torso and hence the painting is simple in composition and execution. I used mostly raw sienna for the skin tones and raw umber for the darker areas. While watercolor is difficult to control on the smooth Arches paper used here, I feel that the work does say something about what I was trying to capture - mostly the beauty of the female form. I have a lot more paintings of this nature planned both in oil and watercolor and hopefully will get to them sometime soon. Size of this one is 11" X 7 1/2".

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