Top tier bottom
Last year I did a pastel drawing of Aftyn Rose getting a little cheeky in a comfy green sweater. This painting is from a related moment that shows off her glorious butt.
As I have continued to practice gesture and figure drawing skills, I did another page of Aftyn poses, one of which jumped out as good enough I should redo it as a painting.
I drafted a new, clean sketch from that earlier one, and I liked it a lot. Maybe too much, because all of my follow-ups felt like downgrades from that base.
I went with watercolors over a pencil sketch. I keep picturing the kind of single layer masterpieces I see other people do, and it doesn’t work out for me because I am not so confident with my color and value selection. But I did the smart thing and hid the reference and just spent some time trying to give the painting what it needed. Punchier colors, deeper shadows. I got that to a level I was happy with, and put my iPad away for the night.
The next day I decided it wasn’t good enough. Problems with the pose, problems with the anatomy. I started doing surgery. Tweaking, tuning. Maybe the face should have more orange highlights? Is this yellow enough? Too yellow? What’s going on with the far side of this sweater? Wait, just how twisted is her torso? I labored and labored and eventually, looking at a piece that was clearly overworked, I realized I had ruined it.
Then I started over from the base sketch and tried to do it again. Another failure. I tried it with pencil shading — another failure. Maybe I just wasn’t giving it the time I needed? Nothing I did seemed like an improvement over the original sketch.
In my last pass (fingers crossed), I went with some chunky inks and a washy color palette with sloppy, fast strokes. Really an experiment for me, because while I often work like this in middle stages, I usually get obsessive and try to neaten up all the details. This thing, because of my fear of overworking it again, I just left as is, messy and all.
What do you think? The focus is pretty clear, I think. I like the way it describes where her arm is, with all the folds and curves in the sweater. I’m pretty happy with the face. And, of course, I’m in love with the playfulness of her pose.
It’s not the thing I had in my head, but it’s a nice tribute to a sexy lady. And, probably as I continue to do them, they should get closer to the image in my mind’s eye.
Medium: Digital
App: Artstudio Pro
Tools: Various