More life drawing in watercolour

I’m still doing monthly life drawing sessions, really focusing on making watercolours work for short poses. It doesn’t always turn out great, but I feel like I’m slowly making progress and creating some work I’m really proud of. The painting above is my favourite so far.

Some things I’m taking note of for next time:

• watercolour is totally doable for 1 minute poses, they just require being organised and a lot of abstraction!
• blues and purples can leave the figure looking strangely unhealthy, or at least I haven’t figured out how to use them
• I’m still loving Cadmium Red Light for a single colour sketch, but mixing it with Monte Amiata Natural Sienna (a light brown) gives a beautiful peachy skin tone
• I’ve tried both with and without a pencil sketch, and although my favourites are the former doing a sketch takes a lot of my precious time! I feel that this works better for 10 or 20 minute poses, whereas shorter poses I get straight into paint and add some pencil lines on top near the end.
• For sketching I’ve started using an erasable red lead in a mechanical pencil. I have to be careful to not get too carried away with the sketch and have enough time to paint.