Female Figure in wash technique

by Tissa Hewavitarane

There is a large variety of ink and paint in the market. They can be diluted with water more easily than others. So it is worth while to try out several ways of drawing and painting the human figure.

The female figure is more curvaceous in comparison to the male figure. There's more to drawing and painting the female figure than there is to doing that of a man. The female torso and posterior, for example, often seem heavier in size, than their male counterparts due to the layer of fatty tissues women have.

Today modern women have evolved to own narrower hips, a flatter tummy and generally quite pronounced, rounded breasts. All women have a layer of fat beneath their skin, which is responsible for their smooth, streamlined shape compared to men. Most people you will paint will be clothed, so you need to spend time and thought on how to draw their garments.

Get into the habit of observing the way the clothes hang, crease and fold. Notice the nice smooth curved contours. Of all texture the skin is the most subtle and elusive and painting it so that it looks alive is one of the greatest of all challenges to the painter's skills. Before painting you should construct a line drawing of the female figure with the proportions on arms legs, hips and facial expressions.

Clothes

Young people wear a wonderful range of clothes worth painting. Magazines and newspapers, advertisements and television clips contain photographs of models from which you can work and you will gain much through learning how to depict smart figure shapes.

Once you have learnt to construct the figure correctly the next step is to give shape to the drawing. This is done with colour and various light effects that are carried out on the paper.

Just like other themes that can be painted with watercolour, a certain amount of light is projected on to every figure. This means that some areas can be represented with light and dark shadows. The light areas always are those reserved in the darker tones, it is precisely this effect that produces the volume of the figure. The parts of the figure most exposed to light will have to be outlined to the shadow which will always adopt to the anatomy. Once the figure is defined and the drawing is refined the painting of the volume is started by placing the shadows and light areas.

The synthesis should be the principal recourse of the water colourist. Synthesis means the process by which the representation of subjects is reduced to the most basic elements in general.

When painting without experience there is a tendency to fall into the trap of cluttering with excessive details. As experience is required unnecessary factors are eliminated. To paint a human figure well you have to know what's important and what is superfluous.

By being very economical with techniques it is possible to paint the figures of fairly advanced technical level, despite doing away with unimportant details.

Wash drawing

There are many techniques that normally can be used to paint the female figure. Besides being able to represent the colours, it is important to master and study the female anotomy to draw and paint correctly. We have looked through basic, watercolour techniques of wash in previous exercise.

Wet-into-wet, dry brush, line and wash and calligraphy. They all have their strength and weaknesses. Wash, for example, is the most positive way of indicating shapes, its strength lies in its simplicity despite the fact that wash is really a drawing technique.

Observe carefully in my own painting, a village belle dressed in Diya redda. Her hair is falling down. She is bathing in front of a waterfall. Her mass of muscle in the buttocks and hips gently projects the belly curves. These are all important points to remember when you are painting.

If you paint underweight people first you will have to learn the extent to which bodies differ. My subjects here were normal healthy types. Nevertheless you can see how each part is unique to the individual, just as facial features are. The brush is used to apply wash in the same way one forms the lines with a pen. A wash allows the painter to apply different tones of the same colour, according to the amount of water that is added to the paint on the palette. The first layer will be the base for all the texture to produce skin tones. The base colour will allow all the later applications to act like a filter, modifying the original colours according to the capacity with which they are painted. The back ground is shown with a light yellowish green to show the bushes with dark shades of green.

Media and methods

The pencil is a sympathetic medium for drawing the skin and hair because it could capture the softness of tone and to describe fine lines and rhythm. An effective methods of painting, fine strands of hair is to use a technique of impressing thin lines into the paper with a thin nib pen or No. 1 sable hair pointed brush.

Although many successful portraits and figure paintings are done of women in watercolour, it is not the easiest medium to handle for a subject that is difficult. In any case, beginners are advised to practise before embarking on a human subject.To spread colour in defined areas, or to do fine lines a sable hair brush is used.