FEBRUARY PAINTING CHALLENGE #1 STAGE 1

I drew three figures from the Pose Maniac site to use for this month. It is amazing how you can turn the figures 360 degrees. I decided I wanted all back views in compatible poses. Sitting in front of the computer, I felt constrained to draw smaller than if I was able to stand and use my whole arm. I did 4 or 5 in my sketch book and then traced these three. The great thing about tracing paper is you can flip the image. This gave me more flexibility in combining the figures into a composition. I wanted to work on a larger piece of paper so I took the 3 figures to the copy shop and had them enlarged. This month is very busy and I wanted to save some time. I retraced the images tonight so I am ready to go. Since I was going to work with shapes, I just used the shapes of the muscles and ligaments. I think this makes for a very interesting division of the body plus as I paint these shapes, it will reinforce my visual memory of the structure of the muscles and help with figure drawing in the future. I can see these figures working into some very abstract forms in the future. Now I have to create a value plan and a color concept and I will be ready to paint. By running off copies of the design I can try different ideas without having to redraw. Normally I like redrawing but this is a complex image and time is a factor.