Member-only story
5 More Nude Females
Five life drawings of female models
With hundreds of drawings and paintings of nude women to choose from, it is quite a task to choose five I feel are worth including more than any of the others. They aren’t, of course, but I have to be selective, and find drawings that I have something to say about. I present them in chronological order so it is possible to see how my style has changed over the years and also to include a variety of media where possible.
1 Chizzy Seated
I had not had the opportunity of portraying black skin up to 2010. When Chizzy came to sit for us at Swansea Print Workshop I initially found it a challenge to adapt the technique I had developed to paint white skin. It is too easy to overthink a problem sometimes. I had previously approached a watercolour nude by underpainting a pale greenish yellow before using warmer colours on top, and at first I tried a similar technique for Chizzy’s skin. I reasoned that the process should be similar even if the colours were different, but I couldn’t get the right combination and my painting became heavy and overworked. This would have been my fourth attempt and I went back to basics — get the drawing…
