A Sunday afternoon of `time trials' and paper testing at the TSA. All three of these are on 24 x 36" sheets of Durotone paper; the top two of L- with her recently shaved head on the Butcher White paper, and the one of A- below on their Extra White.
The topmost one is a 1.75-hour study, done with hard compressed charcoal , with some large masses of local value underlaid with smudged-in willow charcoal. I found with extensive smudging the `mottled' character of the papers surface became very evident. The side view of the same pose is a 25-minute study; underdrawn with a loose vine charcoal sketch, and hard compressed charcoal on top.
The lowest one is just hard Nobel charcoal and was about 22 minutes. A- 's face in it went fairly well, but on reflection the pieces of her figure integrate very poorly. In the rush to get a full-figure drawing done, proportions were fishtailing all over like a car on a slippery road. Her head and arm on our left connect, but the torso is way too small, and the arm on our right is a different scale too. To my eyes now, the dissonance of inner proportions makes her head and shoulder look like they are in motion, growing and turning to the right atop her torso. The rendering though, is confident, making the image overall sit just on the wrong side of the line between ordinary awkward and interestingly Surreal.
At the time I was pleased with the immediacy and directness with which it was set down - I felt I was creeping that bit closer to spontaneous drawing I was readily throwing down on newsprint up to a year and a half ago. It's pretty good from the navel down to the bottom of the page, I feel.
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