On the Sunday afternoon, July was working at the ARC studio. There was a black velvet draped over a stool and pinned to the back wall, surrounded by the studio's white walls.
Great if you want to play with chiaroscuro, but I wasn't in the mood for a really dark image. The pose was also relatively static and vertical, a least from the available spot I found to work.
I had a phrase in mind - `grayairoscuro', of contrast emerging from overall grays instead of from a deep shadow. I did my best to stick with that in the top image , but it still seemed to want a lot of darker values than were in the back of my mind. I thought using a square format would be more interesting than having her full-figure in a vertical field, but I don't know that the ankle cropping does anyone any favours. It is a 2-hour study done with water-soluble graphite, Artgraf washes and regular graphite shading added after, on Strathmore watercolour paper.
The lower one is a 25-minute study with water-soluble pencil on Strathmore watercolour paper, as yet not washed over. The partial figure works better here, with the figure filling more of the space and the mid-calf crop. My viewpoint ( a spot that got vacated) was better with the more direct gaze.
Somewhere between these two would maybe be the ideal.
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