Method to the Madness

Today I asked him if there was a process to all of this. I was feeling frustrated jumping from one thing to another, practicing one skill meticulously, only to abandon it all together. The past two days we've abandoned drawing the contours of the figures all together, and are expected to draw from the interior. Build the drawing from the inside, he said. To answer my question, he said, that there was method to the madness.

Every day we begin with these gesture drawings. This week we had a new model. Although she is thin and small, she had curvier features than the previous two models. Her poses were also more sensual and less angular. Her movements seemed womanly in that classical sense.



















This week we practiced more with lines. We did gesture drawings using the tips of our charcoal. How do I show form without drawing the contours?





































This drawing was the beginning of a series of frustrating attempts. This was a long pose and we were asked to fill out the body with lines while not focusing on the contours. It seems nearly impossible to move away from thinking about the body in that way, trying to ignore that obvious line separating the body from its background.















If the body is supposed to take shape just based on a series of lines, then what kinds of lines would give it shape? I began to imagine the muscles running underneath her skin, how they weave together to give her form.






































And today I left class with this. I'm not even sure where it came from. I was still struggling; frustrated, I told him that I was confused. He came and made a few marks on my paper. He explained that it's not just the outer lines that I should be paying attention to, but the lines going all over the surface of the body......

Hmmm....if the my index finger were the tip of a charcoal pencil, and if I were to run my finger over her body, where would it go? Where would it explore? I began at her neck, and traced my way down to the collar bone, where shadows made triangular shapes, and down the sternum and under the breast, where the curves lead the way to her areola. What an intimate process, to study the curves and bends of this person's body, to follow every inch and crevice.


I began to see the shadows creating shapes on her body. I began to see how the shadows move with the curve of her muscles and the sharpness of her bones.

Her face was the most interesting part to tackle. I grew up drawing faces, especially profiles, but none like this one. They were always generic, like the template of how a face is supposed to be drawn. From forehead to nose to lips.

This time I went from bottom to top. I followed the lines from her chin to her lips, her cheekbone, her nose, the bags under here eyes, the shape of her eye socket underneath the skin...

I found it by letting go. I didn't draw how I think it should be drawn. I didn't have an idea of how it should look. Don't draw how you want it to look; just draw how it looks.

I really felt like I made a breakthrough today. I don't know if these lines will make any sense to anyone else, but I'm starting to look at people differently now. I started to study the structure of the faces of everyone I talked to today. I looked at how the shadows and indentations gave tell-tale signs of the features underneath.

I guess I saw the method to the madness.