We’re back to our routine life drawing sessions now but the start was not as pleasant as I would have liked.
Not only was the first life drawing session back at the fairgrounds very hectic with some setup issues but I had some huge issues with my canvas. It was all my fault, I just grabbed an un primed Fredrix canvas board as I was walking out the door. I could have prepared better.
I didn’t realize how terrible it is to paint on these canvas boards without any previous coats of gesso until now. Not only did the paint slide around too much but the texture of the canvas just killed any chance of showing brush strokes. I tried to tone down the white with a quick, thin coat of a gray, but I think that made it worse.
To top it all off the lighting was also terrible. The model was lit by a warm light and my canvas was lit by florescent. Trying to get a nice warm tone when you canvas is lit in blue is difficult, I found myself using bright orange just to compensate for the light.
Needless to say I had some issues, and a big lack of focus. Next session will be different, I will be prepared.
Yuk! I guess I could have put the paint on super thick to get around the canvas texture but I new this painting was a failure early on and didn’t want to waste too much paint.
