June 5th. It figures.

Figure sketch with stripes

I love painting stripes, especially on clothes.  I just don't do it often enough.  I also like yellow stripes.  Reminds me of caution tape, police lines, road stripes - things you don't want to cross.  But the color yellow is warm and beautiful, very inviting.  It's like a contradiction.

Here's kind of what I was leaning too with this seated figure:

I was thinking something kind of like this painting I did a couple months back.  But I want the new one to be softer and more sensual.  This painting here is too hard and direct.  The posture is tough.

I want to go more ambiguous with the facial features too. I want to larger so I can play with the paint more.  There's a lot of things to work out before I proceed with this one.


 For the back ground I was thinking something like I have been doing with my animals, like in this bear painting:

Can you image it yet?

I really do enjoy painting figures.  Especially females.  I think they (females) are incredibly beautiful. Their hands, necks, ears, everything about them is spot on.  God did a pretty good job when He created Eve.   I don't paint figures very often because I need a model.  Models are hard to find in Yucaipa and they cost money.  My wife doesn't like to model for me and I understand that.  I wish I could draw them off the top of my head, but I can't.  So what do I do when I need a model?  I build them.

The shoulders are different than the red panties.  The foot is different that the blue skirt.  Etc.

 I start out with a decent drawing depicting the pose and stuff I want.  Then I go hunting for the parts to make the model.  The three stages of the built model above are just a few of the stages I went through, definitely more complex than I am showing here.  Below I have taken the finished model and have drawn my figure to be used in a painting.

This painting by the way failed.  It was in the 18x24 range.  I struggled with and eventually destroyed it.  Thinking about it now I should have kept it.  I'm sure if I changed the style of dress and added stripes it would have worked.  But, sometimes it's better to just move on.


Here's another built model:

The early stage is to the left.  Then I changed direction and composition of the painting and so changed the model to match.  The hand holding the brush is actually painted digitally, I couldn't find good reference for it.   I never followed through with this painting.  It was never painted.  She was going to be painting images of animals on a cave wall, like what the archaeologist find from long ago.  Kind of a "tongue in cheek"  answer to who drew these types of images from so long ago.


So after further review and deep thought on this sketch:  I don't think I have the time to sit down and produce a model for this painting and get the painting done in time.  I also don't feel strong with a reason for the painting either.  There's not enough passion to back it up right now.  This is the artist and intuition talking here.  I think I'll save this one for a rainy day.

Now I'm down to two choices...

Larry