New Figures

I've been experimenting lately with various watercolor hues in my figure drawing sessions. I'm struggling with how to create shadow and light in the skin tones, and most of the time I'm rushed to complete the watercolor sketch in the time allotted. I've been using light pencil sketch to capture the pose, and then filling in with the watercolor washes. Here are a few of the recent attempts. I'm using mostly quinaquidone gold, cerulean blue and cadmium red, and occasionally ultramarine blue and alizarine crimson. I'm hoping to eventually get more comfortable with color, but I think these experiments are at least making me paint a little looser, and hopefully I will soon learn better how to use color for flesh tones and shadow.

I like the stronger colors in these first two, but maybe it's just that they relate better to the background colors.

These next two seem to have grasped the light and shadow contrasts, but the colors are too washed out.

These last two seem to be my "blue nudes". I think if I had more time I would have tried a golden wash over all to see if it would have moderated the blue hues somewhat.