03.01.2010

title: Tiffany, Seated In Reverse, Her Left Hand Resting On Her Right Knee
size: 11x15 in.
medium: watercolor, pastel
price: $200.00

I'm starting March off with drawings from my archive. Partially because I'm a little behind on new work due to other deadlines. Most of the drawings I'll post in the next couple of days were done outside of the Society of Illustrators Jazz & Sketch session. And some, like this one of Tiffany, are more on the experimental side.

I drew this at the Drawing Studio in Long Island. Jeff Fisher likes to make you go out of your comfort zone and try new materials and techniques. A lot of them turn out to be complete disasters, but what most consider to be failures are great teaching tools for work done later. For this piece I used both hands at the same time. This is a tough exercise that requires a lot of concentration. I'm sure I cheated a number of times in the duration of the pose. My trick was to pre-plan the mark for one hand while focusing on the contours made with the other hand. Other times I let the"idle" hand make the back and forth "shading" marks while the other hand was the focus of my attention. I came away from this exercise with a greater ability to focus on the marks I was making and their relationship to what I was observing.