Untitled Nude

Last Thursday was my last free day before going back to work on Friday.  I had an appointment with my neurologist that morning which went wonderfully; confirming that I was recovered sufficiently from the skull fracture that I could resume my work duties, and then when I got home I got a text message from Katie, who said she was in the area and asked if I wanted to arrange a sitting.  I texted her right back and told her I'd be thrilled to work with her.  The timing was perfect.  After Wednesday night's painting, I was psyched and prepped and seriously ready to go.

I've worked with Katie on numerous occasions.  She embodies all of what I think to be the best qualities in an artists' model.  She's always on time, never flakes out at the last minute, knows and can control her body very well, is an enthusiastic and engaging conversationalist, and is quite simply beautiful.  On each previous sitting we'd arranged over the past year or so, I'd just been sketching her to get used to working with her.  Thursday, I knew I was ready to paint her.

"Untitled Nude" Jason Burrell 2011. Acrylic on Canvas. 20" x 16"

A close-up of Katie's beautiful face.

A little bit of magic in the upper left corner.

There are some obvious problems with the piece.  Her fingers are too big and her legs are too small.  For the former, I can honestly say I simply haven't yet mastered making finger-shapes in liquid paint. This is a current limitation of my interaction with the medium, but one I know I can solve.  The latter is pretty much a fuck-up, and that's all on me. I'll have to just keep at it.  Another issue I'm having with this one is that I've been unable to achieve a certain subtlety in the colour (especially in her skin tones) that I've frankly come to expect from myself.  I suspect this may be because I'm used to working with my full set of 31 bottles, and for this used only 5. Basically, If you have 5 colors of paint (black, white, red, yellow and blue), and want to have one single bottle for each combination of colours, you need 31 bottles.  That will give you one bottle for each combination of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 colours so you never have to worry about cross-contamination anywhere.  I only used the absolutely necessary 5 colours.  It simplifies the process and allows me to work faster. So either I'm was going for a more primal minimalist approach or I was just being lazy here.  I'll have to think about that one.

All in all though, I'm really happy with this piece.  It's the first of these I've done in a long while and it felt good.  I've learnt some lessons I can carry into the next one, and even with its shortcomings, the painting, I think, is beautiful. A big part of that is the fact that she looks pretty in this.  You look at this painting and even if you find yourself thinking there's this problem or that problem, I doubt there's a question in your mind that this is a painting of a pretty girl.  Which means I did what I set out to do.