Return to Figure Drawing! (NSFW) (Patreon)

After taking a month off from our usual Wednesday night jam, Michael and I (we miss you, Tim!!) returned with our favorite regular model!

I liked my 5-minute warmups the best from the whole night:

Our model picked the long pose in seconds (because she's that good) (also because she's an artist herself), so I spent 20 minutes doing a preliminary study before going in with paint. Decided to tilt the head slightly for the final.

Okay, so I'm using my usual trash setup - a kid's Prang watercolor set and Dick Blick hot press block (Blick wc paper is actually my favorite, though, so they're not really trash). 

But this time, I decided to try a brush I'd kept shying away from, which is this:

I was recommended this Silver Black Velvet brand by a worker at Howard's Art & Frames in Hagerstown (if you're local, CHECK IT OUT it's wonderful). So I dedicated the whole night to introducing myself to it.

Things started out pretty good! The brush was soft, but I tried to lean into it and stay loose. I had a hard time getting really dark darks (already a challenge with watercolor). Once I finally loaded the brush with more paint than usual to get some dark values...

... we got some very dark eyebrows! 

Ah, well. I'm not sure what I'll do with this brush - it didn't have the snap its description claims it has, and it was a little soft and unruly - but it was fun to try something new. "IT'S A PRACTICE!!"

I started using another new-to-me brush for my dad's ongoing and now belated 70th birthday gift of car paintings, and it, too, was purchased at Howard's. It's a Princeton brush, but the specific name eludes me right now. Long story short, it's the One Brush to Rule Them All and I'm going to have to buy a second one. Once I dive back into his gift, you know I'll share all the brush info here with you, my Art Nerd tier. 

And if you're not here for that level of nerdery, you can just enjoy in-progress pictures of my struggle drawing EIGHT of my #1 drawing subject enemy. Cars are my horses.

'Til next Wednesday!