Week 23 - Muscle Structure. Combining Black and Colour Media

For this task, things got trickier again because of the paper. I thought I would avoid what happened with the charcoal drawing and use more textured paper. It proved to be hard to control, so it was a bit of a challenge, especially since my experience with pastels was limited. Even so, I thinnk the paper created an interesting effect. 

I started by drawing a thumbnail, which I later also used to test the colours before applying them on my drawing. 

I sketched the figure using orange and started describing the muscles, using lighter lines. Then, as I progressed, I tried to add more contrast. The foreshortening on the closer leg was a bit difficult, as well as the shape of the foot behind, as the position was a bit awkward for me to draw. I decided to just indicate the foot with a few lines, so I would be able to fix the foreshortening using shading. 

After testing the colour palette, I added more variation by using some red for the midtones and brown dor the shadows. I tried to add as much detail as possible. The hands were the most difficult to define using pastel, but I quite like how the hand in the back turned out, especially the knuckles. I also managed to make the back foot look less awkward by using shading and redrawing the toes in perspective. I used blue in the background to ballance the palette. 

At the end I added the charcoal, in the darker parts and for the more interesting shapes -  more for the arm and leg closer to the viewer, to accentuate them.

I think the drawing could have used more contrast and more tonal variation, which in future drawings I will try to add as much as possible, as soon as possible in the process. Using charcoal to define the forms was interesting, as it allowed us to use shading and rendering, as well as gestural lines. The complicated part was choosing where to place the dark lines, without overusing them.

Overall I enjoyed the task, although I did find it complicated because of my lack of experience using pastels. Even so, it was good practice and something I had a lot to learn from.