Life Drawing - Jeanne

Last week at life drawing was a long pose. An ideal opportunity to try out a larger watercolour. We had a lovely model, Jeanne. Tadhg has difficulty pronouncing her name. But then again, I guess that when he goes to France, people struggle with his name too!
So after a few warmup charcoal sketches at the easel, we did three 20-minute sessions of the same pose. I took out my big watercolour paper (I think it's more or less half imperial, about 40 cm by 60 cm - I must really check this some day), clipped it to the board and worked standing at the easel. I used Bockingford Cold-pressed 535gsm paper, so no fear of buckling paper. I spent the first 20 minutes carefully drawing, and then maybe another 10 minutes getting the details right, best I could. And then I started with watercolour. I would like to evolve to a looser style, directly to watercolour, like I do for most other things I paint, but I have to get used to working at this size first, so it will be a while!!

But working at the larger size, and standing up, certainly helped getting the proportions more accurate.