Original Figure Drawing, “Dreaming”, charcoal, 18 x 24”, 2019

From this era of my art-making, before the pandemic, and before studying oil painting in Santa Fe, this is one of if not my favorite drawing.  The pose was very challenging, and I decided to tone the whole paper using smeared charcoal before beginning.  The lightest elements of the figure are erased out to the paper, while fairly minimal lines and shading make up the contours and the darker shapes.  Having the portrait of the model turn out as well as rendering successfully the idiosyncrasies of his gesture were two small wins in the same drawing.  I wish I’d had a bit more time - this was made in an Open Studio, and the poses were only ten or twenty minutes long.  It is so, so rare to draw a figure in a difficult pose, and to have things “work” without repeat attempts, at the first try.  I almost never produce drawings with such ease, as the ratio of “had to work as hard as possible and still made a few mistakes” to “everything clicked” in my figure work is probably 100 to 1.  I am ever so grateful for those 1s, and there is no other way to come across them than to make many, many drawings.

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