I want to see which BG colours were the most successful so I can cherry pick the right ones for pre-painting canvasses for next term.
Looks like the blues and purples work best (the carpet is a manky dark grey/blue and the walls are duck egg blue in the main room) so no surprises there really. I’ve got a soft spot for the green and yellow ones too – its knocking on boring otherwise.
Reds, oranges, ochres and darks are all out, as is white.
Here’s a compendium of close-ups.
…and a gallery. Click pics to enlarge.
Dave Cropley 
These look great! And I agree with you on the bg color choices. I like too that you have a great range of models here. Just curious: what qualities make a model better/worse for your work?
Thanks! Less conventional models are always more fun, as they have more character. Decent lighting and a good pose always help too. I’ve always wanted to draw a contortionist – that would be great! Since I’ve been doing the slightly longer poses the luck of the draw also plays a big part with the pose that you get.
Have to agree again. As a photographer, I live and die by the lighting. The atypical models are more interesting to me as well.
I wouldn’t dismiss orange, perhaps just worked with the hair colour. Blue and greys do look good though. Good luck next term.
Thanks Ian – you make a good point. I discounted oranges and ochres as they were quite close to skin colour, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t be interesting…