More Background Shading, Day One

There'll be two entries around this one. A cancellation came up on the Thursday before my Friday, I asked for it, and I got it. So, another back-to-back.

I'll admit to a bit of trepidation going in. Not about the sessions themselves, but about where we'd be working: the inside of the leg and the knee, which from everything I'd read are the notoriously painful areas. And from the thick black bars we'd done at the top of the leg last time, I already had a rough idea of what that felt like. On top of that it has been horrendously hot in the UK for weeks now (it feels like months) so everything is sticky and uncomfortable before you even sit down. I had the usual worries about the trains too. In the end they were fine. The heat wasn't.

At the studio we spent the first fifteen minutes or so marking up the day with a Sharpie. Deneka works so quickly and so accurately that the plan was to have basically all of the background finished by the end of the day, which meant all the fun areas: the knee, the inside of the knee, the whole of the upper thigh, the upper inner thigh, and a little around the back. The marking-up is more considered than it sounds. A denser Sharpie for the deep, saturated black, and a lighter hand for where the grey will sit.

We started on the knee, deliberately, because it was going to be the worst. And it was pretty spicy. In previous posts I've talked about the pain settling after the first ten minutes. Not here. It was ever present. Never at the point of "this needs to stop," but properly uncomfortable is probably the fairest description. The usual free-flowing conversation went quiet for a while as I concentrated on my breathing and just worked through it. That seemed to do the job, and by about twelve the knee was done, which is really good going. It looks superb. Properly black, obviously heavily saturated at the moment because the ink has only just gone in, but the big, bold design is exactly what I want for the whole suit. This is working.

A short break, then the inside of the leg. And honestly, that was worse. The skin is so thin there. A lot of breathing, a bit of conversation, and the heat sitting on top of everything. Manageable, but not ideal. I think if it had been cooler the whole session would have felt easier. We wrapped up with about half an hour to spare, which was a relief.

Back at the hotel I was gasping. Two large bottles of water straight away, and probably four or five litres over the course of the evening. An energy drink, a Lucozade, a massive burger, a lot of sweets. I don't think I made it past eight o'clock before I was out like a baby. Cling-filmed, elevated, gone.

Tomorrow the main focus should be shading the koi, and maybe a few bits and pieces around it. We'll see how it goes.

That's it for now. Hope you enjoy the photos.