The model came in with blue hair, but didn’t look well. She took a long time to settle. At first she was looking up. Then, after we started on the pose she started to look down, which was a better pose. We all changed our drawings. Then, after complaining about the backless chair, resumed her initial pose. I stayed with what I had and worked on. She closed her eyes and entered into a stillness, but I wanted to contradict this with some strokes and scrapes.
I had built the painting on a very dark background and I felt this gave me a lot of options. I will be trying this approach again and see if I can develop it further.
Further figurative work is on my website; grahammcquadefineart.com