Straight Up

This pastel drawing ‘Model Session – 26-03-24 – 2’ is the second one of a succesful live model drawing session. Location: ‘De Blauwe Tram’ in Leidschendam. As explained in the art statement to the first pastel it’s a great place to have sessions at. Whereas that one showed a reclined position this one I really was looking forward to. So we moved the tables and had model Mike Wolters stand straight up. More or less a quite an academical pose but I had just the right paper in mind for that. Diving deep into my paper stash I was looking for some more Ingres paper. Suddenly I came across some marbled blue velours paper. I remember I bought it years ago at Goedman’s in The Hague. Back then my eye was caught by the beautiful marbled structure. Time to put it to good use.

Chiaroscuro Boudoir

There was a time I used velours paper more frequently. Probably using it for ‘Nude – 21-12-16 (sold)’ was the last time. Very unforgiven it is, especially for the untrained pastellists among us. There is little room for error because you can’t correct or erase lines properly. Thus a matter of carefully calculation proportions. The fun but also challenging part was to be only concerned renderdering the highlights. So no contour delineations, even not temporary ones. Besides this technical difficulty laying down strokes with Conté carrés always proofs to be difficult. On velours these carrés are bit too hard. The little hairs simply eject the tiny chalck particles into the air, creating funny vapes. Softer pastels are better but then you have to be sure that these strokes are there to stay. The overall result I like. It’s dramatically chiaroscuro boudoir-like.

Pastel drawing on velours paper (50 x 70 x 0.1 cm)

Artist: Corné Akkers

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