Striding Man

Just a drawing I like a lot. It was a short pose, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, give or take. I'm pleased both that this quick drawing is still in a very beginning stage--never to go any further--and yet is as complete as it needs to be. It's a sufficient statement of its own. (As for the name I have given to this drawing: He was standing still, but his stance here is such that it appears as if he might be strolling across the room for the observers drawing him.)

Drawing on tinted paper

Artists sometimes choose to draw or paint on tinted support, (paper, canvas, or other surfaces). This may be to add a certain mood or even drama to the drawing/painting that would otherwise be absent, and/or to allow for laying in highlights with white or other light-colored pigments (yellow, etc.) to create a more robust three-dimensional appearance to the flat images. Artists can also entirely cover the colored support with pigment; the underlying color tone of the paper/canvas may show through or interact with the applied colors, creating an optical mix that results in a richer "mood" or color tone to the finished picture that would be difficult or impossible to achieve otherwise. In my case, in these (and a few other drawings) I wanted to get away from the familiar sameness of drawing on white paper, to experiment with creating a more rounded three-dimensional effect adding dark and light tones to the "mid-tone" of the colored paper. In short, these were exercises. I'm happy with these two drawings, but in the short time I had to work on each drawing, (approx. 2.5 hours each), I could not go as far with the dark/mid-tone/high-light dimensional effects as I might have otherwise.