Readers

 I decided this afternoon to do another in my "People Reading" series. At first I was going to redo one with which I was dissatisfied and try to do it better; it was one of the ones with a coat of gesso on the paper before I did the drawing and painting, which is great for texture but really wreaked havoc on my ability to get the kind of detail I wanted. It was a struggle, start to finish, and even though others liked it, I just couldn't. It felt plasticky and unsubtle, and I didn't like the way the paint beaded up on the gesso.

I started by making the background I had planned for that one—pale pink, with bright spatters of lime, turquoise, and orange. But after I pulled out the reference photo and started looking it over again, I decided that part of the problem was, I didn't like the subject! She was skinny and critical looking with flat, boring hair, and didn't look happy at all to be reading her book—in fact, she looked like she was on the verge of shouting at it and throwing it across the room. So I went looking for a photo of someone who seemed to be genuinely engrossed in and enjoying what she was reading, and painted her instead! 

This is "Emmaline reads."

As it turned out, that pale pink background really turned out to be a passive tool to light up everything on top of it. I'll have to remember that.

Gel pen, pencil, Daler Rowney inks, India ink, Uniball Vision pen, Signo white gel pen, white gesso, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.