Putting my feet up?

Feet up, not a care in the world. That's what it looks like, doesn't it? One very nice person said recently that I never do a bad drawing but I was busy disproving that theory over the last couple of weeks! Everything I did turned out bad and even this one, the best of the bunch admittedly, I haven't really finished, I just got tired of looking at! I went to life class a couple of weeks ago and even that was too poor to post. Sadly it was a model whose shape I usually struggle with and I finally got a good outline but then ruined it with the colour!

Inspiration fails and sometimes you can only wait it out. I was starting to come out of the fog last week when I got a rather nasty migraine. I try not to write too often about them as it might sound like I'm exaggerating but I lost half a stone in four days and it may take a few days to get my energy back. Valuable days I wanted to spend sketching and getting into the swing of things as I have a rather exciting trip coming up next week - but I will keep the destination as a surprise. It will be a test to see, if time allows, how much sketching I can do but at the very least there should be lots of inspiration and great photos to post! (If I have any readers left and you'd like a hint - it's an 11 hour flight from Paris!)

Back to the drawing. The main problem I've been having is with skin tones and drawing from life. I think perhaps I've paid too much heed to advice about using blues, greens, purples in shadows and cools, warms etc., and not paying attention to what I actually see. (In fact, advice like that in general I'm beginning to think is for people who need to analyse and make art a science.) I find skin - in reality and not in photos - to be quite grey. The life model's skin looked so white and grey I thought it would be dull to depict it as it actually appeared and inside tried out a few colours, all of which looked strange. Here, with my feet, I tried using blue for shadow but apart from a few light touches, it didn't seem to work. If the shadow looks grey, I think I'll be a rebel, I'll just use grey! The first few colour drawings gave me a false sense of security perhaps, because now I see that skin in some lights is very hard to make look as if it's a living thing. Lots more practice needed, in fact you could say I'm still finding my feet, and there will be plenty more bad drawings to come!