Zooming in on the figure

Next Thursday we are going to move away from painting the whole figure to choosing an interesting form to paint from our life model. The ideas around modelling form are the same but we can concentrate on maximising the richness of paint as well as seeing how to keep our colours lively, as shown by these Lucian Freud details.

Of course you might just want to concentrate on the head in different positions too.

(Lynette Yiadom-Boakye)

It is sometimes easier to get lost (in a good way!) in the abstract shapes of a part of the body than the more recognisable complete figure. This might be a good opportunity to try a more "impasto" technique, using paint more thickly, and to vary our paint brush size and direction.