A Drawing of Anna

Anna, 2011, graphite on paper, 11 x 15 inches

Meet Anna, the most recent figure drawing to come out of the Teaching Studios of Art in Brooklyn. This was March's pose, and just today I had the chance to photograph it. I'm learning so much as I do these one month poses, and with Anna the subtleties of her soft curves presented a big challenge. Light hit almost evenly throughout her body, making it difficult to identify muscle areas. I had to emphasize the shadow running on the left side of her body a lot more to get some sort of drama in the drawing. Perhaps the most difficult areas for me were rendering the foreshortening of the hand and of her feet. The hand had to be redrawn about four to five times, and thanks to Adam Miller I was able to grasp the concept of simplifying things to geometric shapes. I wasn't able to complete the drawing, but I did get the most important information down to make it a good looking one. At the moment I'm working on another month long pose, I will post it as soon as the month is over.