Boardwalk Showers part 4

The spring semester begins tomorrow, so I thought I should take advantage of today's holiday to get as much work done as possible. I got a lot done, but not quite as much as I had planned.

The story begins a week ago, the night of the last critique in the Studio. I arrived a little before the start time, opened up the room, and found a note on my table. It was left there earlier when Molly was working, from someone looking for work as a nude model. (this kind of thing happens when you're an artist) I followed up a few days later, giving her information about potential opportunities in the area, and setting up a short session for her to work for me. As I mentioned a week ago, at least one person at the last critique thought that the figures in my shower room print looked too much alike, and since I was planning to add another figure, it made sense to bring in someone with a different body type to be the model. After looking at our mutual schedules, we decided to do it today around 5 pm.

However, I still wanted to bring back my original model as well, to help me fix a few anatomical issues and to work out light and shadow patterns on the earlier figures. Seemed to me that it would be best to set up the room once for all the drawing, so I made last minute arrangements for the original model to come in today in the early afternoon. It would be hectic, but allow me to resolve all the figure issues in one day.

But things didn't quite work out that way. I got a call while still at home from the late day model saying that she wasn't feeling well and had doubts about making our session. Still, I went in as planned and set up- moved the chairs, set up spot lights, put up something that would stand in for a shower curtain, and cranked the heat. The early model showed up on time and in an hour we got a lot done. Photos and drawings of her behind the curtain will be used when I'm ready to put the two upper left figures behind their translucent shower curtains. One figure that did get more finished today was the one coming out of the shower. While she posed I redrew most of it, changing her body type a little, fixing the head, adding a towel clutched in her free hand, and noting major shadow patterns over the whole body (see above). I also had her take the pose of the standing figure in the lower left (based on a different model) and did two sketches on paper of her partly draped with a towel, one of which I'll adapt for the block sketch. I also added shadows to the two figures in the right side panel (based on two quick poses today) and a very quick sketch of her in the pose of the figure to be added, as a back up to my plans with the other model.

After she was gone I spoke to the other model (who had business in the building, which is why we scheduled the session for today), who still wasn't sure if she would be posing today or not. So I worked on another task for a while, my ongoing coloring of older projects. Eventually she came back down and told me that it wasn't going to happen today, and we made tentative plans to try again in about a week. I'll have plenty going on with the beginning of the school year to keep me busy until then.