Andrew Cross Composition

This pastel drawing ‘Model Session – 17-01-19’ I began last Thursday. My regular model sat for me in my studio. I keep a clean blanket for her to sit on. She is quite small and the blanket can be considered rather big from a negative space point of view. Therefor I put the focus on the many colours white surfaces can show in the folds, highlights and shadow parts. This way I actually have a lot of forms going on. The folds really form a sort of Andrew cross composition with the slanted body position of the model. Moreover, the play of light and darkness in both the blanket and the body follow the same rhythym. They more or less cascade from the upper left to the lower right corner. Unfortunately I didn’t finished it in one go, so it took me a couple hours more to complete it.

White a Funny Color

White is a funny colour in this respect. I tried to match her figure to the colours used in the ‘white’ parts in order to create harmony. I think the result is some kind of impressionism with a clairobscur edge to it. It’s the same model by the way as depicted in ‘Model Session – 29-11-18’. In my studio I still have 2 couches, remnants of a period in time my studio was my living room. The couch she is sitting on in this one is opposite to the one visible in the November pastel. It’s a bit smaller so I don’t use it for live model drawings session. In fact this might be the very first time. Normally there is an uplight next to it. However, I had to put that aside and place some decent lighting shining on her back. 

Pastel drawing on paper (49.5 x 64.7 x 0.1 cm)

Artist: Corné Akkers