Curled up in the corner

A large painting of Fiona

This is the largest painting I have done so far.  I caught Fiona just relaxing in the corner of a sofa one day, a view which directly lead to this picture.  The construction of the image naturally fell into place, but I had her pose in this position again because I wanted to experiment with making the overall them one of large, interlocking blocks of colour.  The underpainting, was done in very much that simplified style ( see the second image down on the right).  I tried to keep a large part of that feel in the final painting.

I also experimented in the initial drawing stage, marrying some of the main tones into my usual structural drawing style that generally focuses on the form as expressed by the shapes of plains.

I enjoyed this picture and still do.  It seems to capture a sense of her restfulness combined with the elegance of her limbs.  At the same time to overall image is balanced and the strong colour shapes exciting.