Figure Drawings
For a decade I drew along with my students in 4B pencils on ledger bond paper, but at a certain point I needed to challenge and interest myself with another medium. I chose a limited palette of gouache paint and bristle brushes. What I discovered, besides my delight in experimenting with this new medium, is that in using color unnaturalistically to emphasize my responses to the movement and psychology of the model I was dramatizing the issues of rhythm, tension and the body’s cooperative forces for my students in a new way.
I invited my students to join me in drawing with gouache but most of them were content to keep drawing and heightening their focus in pencil. Because using the gouache color in a basically unnaturalistic way released a heightened intuitive response in me it made drawing from the model feel more imaginative and more open to the reactions I had to the person I was studying. I have continued to draw in this way ever since.