Monday, March 9, 2020

43 Strokes

Limiting the number of stokes applied, especially in oil painting, creates a fresher less studied image. The same principles hold true with pastel. Sometimes, if you're not careful, you can overwork your drawing while trying to match a specific color and you'll lose the freshness of the drawing.
I used a pear photo that I took outside because I wanted high contrast of light and shadow.

Pear reference photograph.
If you want to try this method, start out with a loose sketch of the shapes. I'm using 400 grit Uart paper with a gray wash using very watered down acrylic paper.
Loose sketch on Uart paper.
Since I studied my pear shape and colors in the lesson on "Different Papers" I had a good idea what colors to use which helps when you're limiting the number of strokes.
In this study I only briefly layered the colors and I kept the application of colors to just 43 strokes for the entire piece. The strokes are exacting and deliberate without fussing about. I see many students taking hesitant small strokes. The "43 Stroke" challenge will eliminate that tendency.
I like the freshness of the drawing.
"43 Strokes" is all it took to create this drawing.


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