Blood Draw part 5

 

Various things involving family members have kept me from getting up to the Studio as much as I might like, then a few days ago I got an email from the director telling me she had moved on and was no longer working there.  So my first priority this week was seeing how this affected me, if at all.  I did verify that the planned fall tenants show would still happen, and the rest we will see about.  

Today I was there to work on some woodcut.  It's been a few weeks since I asked a nurse if she wanted to take part.  At the time she seemed down on the idea, so I am not surprised she didn't contact me.   I will take that as it is now all up to me.  Last time I started sketching a nurse in pencil, based on a charcoal of a face with pronounced shadows, something from my figure drawing days in Belmar.  Not a perfect source, but one I could work with.  Rather than try to dig the original out of the basement, I had sketched the original drawing in pencil (from my blog) in my sketchbook, and brought that to the Studio to work from.  The first attempt (in pencil, still waiting for the potential model) was okay, but when I looked at the block with a mirror at home, I could see the face wasn't right.  And since this block will be printed as a mirror image and the print seen, I definitely had to fix it before any cutting.  

So today I did just that.  First using that same pencil re-sketch to make adjustments to my first block sketch, and since that one looked better both forwards and backwards, I went ahead and inked the head and neck.  I would much rather have had a live model, but this will have to do.  All the arms (both mine and hers) will have to wait until I set up the proper lighting, so I can get similar shadows to the ones I have already inked.  Then I'll put in some background values, balancing lights and darks with what I have for the various figures.  Today's results can be seen below:

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I have no deadline for this piece, so I can take my time and get things the way I want before moving on.  For example, I won't draw the scrubs on the nurse until I have a source to work from.  I have a pile of photos of such things, but they are at home today.  I guess that all be the next step.   But as I get to the next step, I'll post something here.  

Meanwhile, for music today I had with me my jazz/blues book and so I picked something randomly from that- Cassandra Wilson's New Moon Daughter, which I knew to be a single album recording, and thus about what I would need for today's drawing session.  If you want to read more about this recording, I wrote about it back in January of 2022.