So. Finally on holiday with my family. Been aching to do a little painting just for the exercise. Then this lady appears at the campsite pool. Aisling later points out how wierd this was of me later on, but I surreptitiously take a few pics of her. she reminded me of how women used to dress poolside when I was a kid. Thought she'd make a cool subject for a character study painting.
Got these back to my tablet and did a preliminary sketch in ArtRage. Mostly based on one photo but drawing a hand detail from another.
Working against a neutral grey for this study, I drew colours straight off the photos. A little lazy I know but it helped to quickly establish the temperature of the skin tone, especially given the cool light from the pool below. First pass went under the line drawing.
I knew I did not want an outlined illustration, so I worked over this embellishing details in a very rough way, painting over the drawn lines and erasing them, adding rim lit edges and tonal edges that worked better against the neutral background. Added some context which I eventually pushed back.
To photoshop where I added a little grain and gradient to the grey. First stab as seen below is always too much. Slept on it and knocked it right back to the study as it stands image at at the top of the page. Took about fours in total.
