Sally Duback figure drawing demo at AC Art Association 3/1/10

You can see her pictures and read about her on her website, http://www.sallyduback.com .

Generally once a week she works with a model. She loves drawing people. She works lifesize. She says drawing is like keeping a diary. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's about seeing.

For this demo she used the brown paper that they use for cardboard. Sometimes she uses it just as is. However for this demo she prepared the paper by painting it with the following mixture to provide tooth for the pastel. about 1/2 jar of cheap red acrylic paint, about 1/2 joint compound (can use marble dust which has a finer texture), about 1/2 cup house paint plus enough water make it like a heavy cream. She paints this on the front. To keep the paper from curling you can spray the back with water. This coating allows more vibrancy from the pastels.

She uses mainly rembrandt with some sennelier pastels. Tends not to use black because it can flatten out image. She likes using a toned background with a ground because it gives a lot of dimension. Likes to exaggerate the colors. She uses a floodlight, compact fluorescent, on the model to get more contrast

Sometimes she sprays her drawings with aquanet hairspray. Others are stored rolled up. She has a lot of these drawings so sold some on ebay. Now she making totems from them. She uses wallpaper paste to laminate her collages. If she frames her drawings she laminates them to cardboard and puts them in a shadow box frame that's fairly deep with plexiglass from midland plastics in Grafton.

She likes to work fast, messy and experimental. She says stay away from how to books and that it's important to develop your own style and palette. She said it takes her a while to get into her drawing but can get most of it down in 45' to 3 hours, then may go back the next day to add final touches but she wants it to be fresh and not overworked. She starts to block in the figure with lighter tones. She usually works on the face until she happy with it. She feels the face and the hands are the most expressive part of the body. Doesn't use reference photo. Works out of her head. If she makes a mistake, she brushes it off with a stiff brush. The background she puts in "complementary colors".

She prefers to work from life. Usually talks with the model. She says it's a fascinating interesting process, a moving target. Photos do all the interpretive work for you, flattens color and are less spontaneous.