Figure Painting Slow Start

Most of the work I did today was on setting up for the next figure painting. I gessoed some sheets of paper, applied an oil ground then began to draw. It doesn’t sound like much but all of that took me about 3 hours.

So for this painting I’m again adjusting my methods a little and trying something different. First I’m now working from a white acrylic gesso ground. Then I applied a thin burnt umber ground to the gesso after it was dry. I tried to let the burnt umber dry before I began to draw but that was just going to take too long, I needed to get some drawing done today.

Then it took me an hour to just get the head drawn. I couldn’t believe it took me that long. Of course I did spend some time composing the figure on the page making sure it would fit where I wanted it. But for some reason the head was taking long to get correct. So, it doesn’t look like much was done on the canvas, but I did a lot of work to get to this point.