Figure Study

This was done on an 8"x10" panel from a three hour pose with my Tuesday night figure drawing group. After seeing some studies posted by Tim Stotz on Studio Escalier's blog, Silver Fortress, I was inspired to try a study in a similar vein.I'm not sure that I'm on the same page (I've never studied with Tim) but what I did here was lay down a brushstroke for each value change relative to the direction of the light, tiling my way across the form. I kept all of my edges sharp to keep the clarity of what each plane change was doing. The lighting that we're using is not ideal. The walls are all white and the model stand is light gray. I'm using a very powerful incandescent spotlight to burn through all of the ambient light and at least on some level give a unified cut to the direction of the light. Using this method was interesting because it made me conceptualize the light even more and coincidentally this came up as the main topic in the discussion of the figure painting I'm working on at GCA. How to unify the darks in the figure ground relationship and push the lights forward to give emphasis to the salient parts of the figure. So I think I will keep going with these little painting studies for a while before I pick up my pencil again.