Figurative Nude Art in Soft Pastel

These are some great pastel drawings that I did at a quick sketch open figure drawing session hosted by the Palette and Chisel in Chicago Illinois. I attended the long pose session that saturday morning, and stuck around for more quick sketch to get the chance to draw the lovely model that afternoon. I was nice and warmed up so I think the results from the shorter poses we very expressive, energetic, and colorful.

I was working with a small set of Rembrandt soft pastel on newsprint and a very nice paper called Ingres by Hahnemuhle. All of the work that afternoon has a similar feel in term of color palette, but the changes in substrate show how remarkably different a piece can be just by changing the paper.

The first piece above is of the model’s back. She is sitting in a chair with her legs straddling the chair back. The view affords us a look at the details of her shoulders, spine, and the small of her back. This was a 20 minute pose.

The two following pieces were 15 minutes for the portrait and 25 minutes for the head and shoulder portrait. They are both from similar vantage points and have nearly identical lighting. I used similar methods to render each including contrasting warm hues from incandescent light and cool hues from natural light. The main difference here is the paper which they were drawn on. The shorter pose is on an olive colored paper whereas the longer head and shoulders portrait in on a warm light grey paper. These are good examples of how the substrate has a dramatic effect on the overall feel of the artwork.

The final two drawing are 1 minute gestures on newsprint with pastel. They’re fun expressive warm-up pieces, of which I have hundreds. When I do my gestures, I forego doing strictly linear style drawings and choose to block in shapes of shadows and include background contrast.