Hurt

Pastel on Pastel Board, 19 x 12 inches

Continuing with one more Pastel on my recent theme of painting from the female human model, I painted this smaller Pastel when she hit this pose quite naturally and I said "that's it!"  Getting an interesting pose when you have no preconceptions as to what you want is tricky, but the main thing I look for is how the light plays on the body.  In this instance, the light pouring through the window from the left, lit the right side of the model's features as she clutched her waist and turned her head towards the light, and the stretchy grey top perfectly described her form.

So, having got the pose, the picture came together quite quickly and I found a surprising amount of colour in the grey top, with warm reds and purples and cooler blues, greys and greens.  I made use of the lit model's right side and placed a relatively darker tone next to it, and conversely a lighter tone next to her darker left side in shadow, which is always a good trick to employ, called counterchange in artists' speak, to make the painting more interesting.