Life drawing: Blonde hair gone pink and purple

Pondering my choice of colours when life drawing in colour pencil. And sharing my latest drawings.

For many years now I’ve cast aside boring ol’ graphite pencils and turned to more colourful options when doing life drawing. Somehow I feel more able to scribble away with vigour when drawing in colour, and much more enjoy the resulting images.

One curiosity of that is I sometimes (but not always) land on a particular colour combination I like for a given model. I almost always opt to draw the body and hair in different and contrasting colours. But there’s no particular reason other than how I’m feeling in the moment. 

The particular model I was drawing at the most recent session I attended had rather mesmerising wavey hair with lighter highlights, which I seemed quite preoccupied with throughout my drawings. I went through a few colour variations but mostly gravitated towards pinks and purples, straying briefly into reds.

The model and I had a brief chat when she was wandering around looking at all the art in the mid-session break, and she seemed curious about the colour choices, given she had indeed once dyed her hair pink. But I could offer no better explanation than it felt like the right thing to do.

When I drew the same person before, earlier in the year, I had a much more varied colour selection across my drawings. So I feel quite curious about my own mind; why she felt much more pink-ish to me this time!

I find a curious delight when I do settle on a colour combination for a particular person. Years ago I drew the same model several times, and always drew her blue with bright red hair. It felt very just right for her.

So I’m kind of hopeful I get to draw this current model again, and discover if she has indeed settled into a pink/purple-haired place in my mind!