The room was quiet as we drew at Studio b. this week. The model was extraordinary, performing poses during our one-minute and three-minute warm-up period that would have taxed an accomplished yogi. We warmed up with gesture drawings for about half an hour, before drawing a few 10 and 20 minute poses, and then finally a 45 minute pose. I’ve been enjoying a combination of white nupastel with black graphite for a while now, but in my final drawing I opted for a blue pencil with the white nupastel, at left. The form was very simple from my vantage point, for the most part being only a silhouette with very little modeling. Her shoulder blade was prominent, and there was a highlight on the muscle edging her spine, so I put a little more emphasis on her hair and the fabric she was lying on, to provide textural contrast.
The night before, I had listened to Amber Rubarth performing there at Studio b., in the courtyard below our figure drawing room. Her music was still playing in my head as I drew. I videotaped a few of her songs, but I don’t yet know how to upload them from my whiz-bang new iPhone, so here’s a link to a previous performance by Amber: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mn9VtIFM0g.
I made a mistake on the drawing pictured at right, something I know I should never do. I had torn a corner of the page off, to give to another artist who wanted to order the kind of paper I was using. Then I kept that paper, to draw on. I’d been carrying it around for several weeks, and last night I decided to draw on it, without trimming off the torn corner. I used the rest of the borders as my boundaries, treating the torn corner as if it wasn’t torn. Now that the drawing is completed, I see that I would have to mat out or trim off that torn corner, and with it, lose other essential parts of the drawing. Since there is excess paper on another side, I think a good framer might be able to patch it, but the patch would show, upon close inspection. So I have priced it as a sketch, even though the drawing turned out exactly as I wanted it. Lesson learned, hopefully — If a corner is missing, always trim the paper to square up that corner before using it.
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