Eva 8th of January 2017

It is Sunday 8 of January and I am on my way to the first live painting session of this year. Today I will paint Eva, a Dutch model. Last time I painted her she had long hair. It is a beautiful model. The painting I made of her could have been better. I suppose I say such things about all my earlier paintings. The painting I still will make they are the most beautiful paintings of course.

It is a new year so do I got any new year resolutions? Last year I worked on more contrast. More contrast in light and dark and more contrast in warm and cold. I think I will keep on working on previous years resolution but I will add to it “more conscious selection of color”. It has to do with the idea to blend less. That is the underlying idea to blend on the panel a little less. That idea comes from Mr. Carder on the YouTube channel drawmixpaint.com.

It is a bit hard to follow the system of Mr. Carder totally but I must say I think he is coming from the right direction.

It would be nice with a breakthrough in likeliness but I am humble enough to realize that that is something I cannot force. Perhaps I can use a little more time on measuring before I start painting. This is a bit unclear still. There will be experimentation on this.

The weather is gray today but the train trip is fantastic. The train company put some kind of extra luxury wagon. Normally the way to Amsterdam is more luxurious and on the way home I need to be happy if I can get a standing spot.

My book I am writing progress nicely. I am at 145 pages right now. I learned a lot about synthesis in the process.

Now I am on the way home. Amazingly enough, I sit on the train in a “silent” cabin. Now let’s see how silent it will become.

The artists today were Tom, Bas, Luke, Saskia and me.

First I tried to draw the entire Eva.That became a little bit like a puppet drawing. I started over and simply concentrated on the face and the upper body. It was not that easy either. Saskia had decided she would wear a hat. I had the feeling that the holidays had been a bit too long so that I had to catch up on my drawing skills. My version of Eva's face became a little Indian.

I kept the color splotches as I had promised. I even tried to get the mixing done in the palette instead of the panel.

Perhaps her breasts became a little too wide on my painting. That could very well be. Next week I got another attempt at improving this painting.