Francesca 10 January 2016

It is Sunday 10 January 2016 and it is the first model painting session of the year. Today it is a little windy but the sun shines! Found this footstep on a pillar in the bike parking area of the train station in Almere. It was me putting it there a couple of weeks ago. I am surprised that it has not been removed yet.

I have no idea who the model is going to be today but I hope it is going to be a female model.

During the holidays I have not painted a single stroke. No aquarelle and no oils. For Christmas I got a little tube with yellow oil paint so I am fully stocked. Most of my spare time during the holidays I used on working on my new blog engine. I started on the blog engine on 5 of September 2015 and every spare moment I am working on it. It is going well but will be nice when the project is finished. A proper website is however never finished.

With a new year it can be tempting to make a long list of New Year resolutions but I will not do that. Finish the blog, yes, but you could figure out that anyway. Last year I started on using one size brush throughout the painting. That worked out well. I will continue on that. I would like to increase my contrast slightly. When I did it for my aquarelle paintings things started to look really nice. I will try that also in my oil paintings. I am almost in Amsterdam now. Perhaps I can figure out what the other artists thinks I should have as my New Year resolution?

Today Saskia, Lotte, Jochem Bas and Tom came painting and drawing.

It came natural with what the resolution would be: “Work less tonal!”. It was Saskia’s suggestion. At first I did not understand her suggestion. Sometimes with art an idea must grow up from within and this was such thing.

Today the model was Francesca. A model from Italy. She had long chestnut brown hair and a pale skin. A wonderful model. She sat really well with a long leather coat.

I had the feeling that the painting break had done me no good at all and that I was not so quick and fluent when setting up the painting. I wiped the drawing attempts several times. In total perhaps 5 times before I got satisfied with the composition. When I started the last time I already had background paint on the panel where it should not be. I worked as quickly as I could and finished the painting on time.

Right now I think I will paint her next time with the same composition but I start from scratch again. Then I can use my energy on more contrast and really analyzing the colors and accentuate these.

The model also was an artist. She had her own website.

So next time I will start from scratch and work less tonal and use more contrast. Sounds like a challenge!