For this exercise, I specifically chose to create a tonal figure study of a larger woman, simply because I knew there would be more depth and volume to convey within the study. Firstly, I began with sketching a few stick men poses just to get an idea of the gesture and weight of a few poses, which helped me chose the heaviest looking pose, depicting layers of skin and the blocks of flesh in the figure.
The next stage was to break down the figure into the shapes that were in the figure and created a 3 dimensional effect, and after figuring out the basic shapes in the lady’s form, I then moved onto a simple pencil sketch creating the shapes and volume that were in the pose to see how the final painting would look like.
My chosen medium for the final tonal study was ink and white acrylic, due to whilst painting the body with the ink, I realised that using white in certain areas would create strong highlights that would create body and form in the study, rather than a good attempt of a study. After applying the acrylic, the study had layers and came forward from the page, which created the illusion of flesh, in particular, the lady’s stomach which slightly fell over her lady parts.
When finished, I added in a basic background and a shadow which created a backdrop and something for the figure to lie on, and with the use of the white acrylic, the figure seemed to be brought forward from all of the harsh sepia tones behind in the background.
SOPHIE FAWCETT'S OCA LEARNING LOG 