ArtyHelen: Thank you! and thanks for the tip about the shoulder, I understand exactly what you mean by tear drop. I will work on that.
Mario: Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this piece so let me respon....
"Whatever you are sketching the image from is not helping at all. Is it a photo, another drawing or what? "
I'm not sketching from anything. I had something I doodled and thought it would be neat to try and make something of it, this is my first attempt at. Actually my very first intention was to draw a woman taking a shower but as usual it never ends up quite like I planned!
"The skin is a generic skin color not at all what skin looks like..the same with the "breast" which takes up that whole upper half of the torso"....
My intention for the skin color was actually to not make real looking skin but something more vibrant. My intention was too use blues and yellows, oranges and pinks. This is my first time with pastel and I just started picking up the colors I liked. For some reason I started to gravitate towards the yellows, oranges and reds. I'm still not finished so let me know what you think...
"you need to do more observing and see what the figure and it's colors really do look like...I am now taking classes in this area and advise you to do the same..you will be suprised at what is revealed to you thru good instruction or even just having to confront a live model...the head should not be left for last, better do the head first if at all, but the very best is to do the entire figure head and all at the same time..then it has a better chance of looking like the different parts belong together...the idea is not photo realism you know...but something that shows a sensitive view of the object and a human interpretation of it."
On doing the head first. I think I was starting to get stumped with what colors to transition to. I still am not quite certain what color to make the head so I started on the rest thinking I'd figure something out. Right now I'm thinking of picking up more of the blue that you find on her back. You've made a lot of good points and it's going to take time for me to digest this. On the comment about photo realism, if I'm understanding you correctly, then I absolutely agree. This was part of my intention. Sometimes I get so uptight, I wanted to try to do something that was loose and to try to just have fun. I tend to get impatient with planning so I thought this would be a fun break. I would love to take a class like yours!
Up until now I have been just trying to read and observe.
Thanks to everyone for your comments and more than that for your honesty. It is truly the only way to learn. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow I'll have an update to post.
First Figure & First Experiment W/Pastel
I haven't really started on the head but after the critiques I plan to enlargen it and scale the neck down. The only part I still feel uncertain about is the armpit. I plan to go to the library. Maybe I'll find something there.
Linear Mode
