Life Drawing & Painting #30

Life Drawing #30 (detail). Acrylic, Posca/Paint Pens and Conte Pencil, A1

Continuing the large abstract drawings & paintings using acrylic and acrylic markers, this weeks session was a fairly good one, although the ‘duplicates’ one (‘Three Little Piggies, shown below) wasn’t as good as the triumph of last week. I struggled a bit until I realised purple was the way in, via the acrylics (since then I’ve gotten some smaller 8mm Posca now that are in colours I don’t have in the larger 17mm ones, and purple is one of those).I tried to do more mixed media – so acrylic paint, conte pencil, various paint pens (not just Posca, the Liquitex ones got used, as did the Molotow inks, and I think one of my empty markers with either drawing ink or acrylic ink on it).

Sea Dreams, Life Drawing #30 Acrylic and Posca/Paint Pens, A1

The Liquitex surprised me not being as weak as I remember – still not as good as the Posca, like the Daler Rowney FW inks, not opaque, rather transparent. The Molotow inks are worth the money btw, very bold, opaque, and the closest thing to the Posca. I was using the refills with some of my empty markers, but I think the ink is probably better quality than Posca. Not cheap though!

Also I tried oil pastel which didn’t ‘resist’ the markers like I wanted, so that failed (and isn’t shown) but apart from that one, this is everything I created. Experimenting more with colour mixtures, mixing acrylic markers while wet, or just via overlaying/cross hatching.

Life Drawing #30, Acrylic, Posca/Paint Pens and Conte Pencil, A1

Three Little Piggies, Life Drawing #30, Acrylic markers, A1 — Life Drawing #30, Posca, A1

This worked really well with green, cyan and gold, as seen below. Big fan of underpainting and colour interactions, putting contrasting colours next to each other to create a third or brighten them.

Must say one down side of the metallic markers is the fact they are almost impossible to photograph directly on, I had to artificially darken these in Lightroom (Praise be the Auto Mask!) to show how they actually look in practice, rather than reflecting sunlight in the garden!

I need to still work on proportion – better than I was, but still the heads aren’t always correct. Might mix in some more measured work, as it felt a bit one-sided to be all ‘messy’. But I am making progress – and have plans at home to go larger (not possible I think in the life drawing session as the biggest boards are A1).