Week 10 - Life Drawing - Tone and Colour in Skin

30 minute sketch, Hard Chalk Pastels

 

These set of life drawing sketches are focused on the tone and colour of the human skin, capturing light, skin tone and tonal value helps to recreate skin in a realistic way. Understanding the structure of skin helps to recreate it effectively. The following theory is present in this sketch:

 

Positives:

• The use of dark shadows helps to define where the skin crumples and bends in  the joints of the hand and also hangs and stretches around the tendons and bones.
• Interesting perspective and it allows you to see the foreshortening of the fingers under the hand and how they rest.
• The white and black chalk shading gives the hand tone allowing you to see where the natural light hits on the hand and the shadows cast on finger joints, knuckles and folds of the hand.
• Long, hard, black lines define the shape and form of the hand well.

Negatives:

• The first finger length seem slightly off from the perspective it is at.
•  More colour tonal values is needed to emphasise the skin on the hand and where it bends and stretches.
• Subtle detail on the skin in terms of tone changes on the knuckles and wrinkles on the joints.



 



30 minute sketch, Soft Chalk Pastels

 

This is another sketch focused on the tone and colour in the human skin,  focusing on the skin tone and how it varies throughout the body and also how natural light effects the colour of the skin is important. The theory that can bee seen in this sketch is as follows:

 

Positives:

• A variety of subtle colour values and shades has helped to create a good amount of realistic skin tone and also shows how it changes throughout the body.
• The use of darker more saturated skin colour and lighter more desaturated skin colour shows how the natural lights hits the body.
• Dark opposing colours help to create the darker creases of the body as seen in the arm pits and under the breasts.
• Soft smudged chalk lines help to create the sense of soft flowing curves on the body.

Negatives:

• The limbs could use more detail and shape to emphasise the hands and feet instead of being sausage limbs.
• The pose and posture could be more emphasised to show weight and how the models rests of the cloth.
• A backdrop is needed to ground the sketch and to add a source from where the light is coming from and how it hits the model.