Katrina Willis, A Solitude of Space, 2008.
Graphite pencil on paper, 11 × 14 inches.   © The Artist
http://www.katrinawillis.com

One of the sweet, recent privileges has been devoting many of my daily drawing exercises to works on paper.  This is a challenge, since I find myself painting most of the time.  But I enjoy the simplicity and portability of pencil and paper.   This moment on paper captures Mark “in the zone.”  This is a drawing of him listening to some friends of ours. I love it when Mark models for me, because I know him really well.  I can capture character traits in drawings of him intuitively without a lot of added research - it’s a logical and natural extension of our relationship.

I also like pencil, because since we’re all continuously becoming ourselves more and more with each new day, I tend to leave areas of the portrait less worked up.  Often I finish out and develop the features of the head and the areas surrounding the immediate focal point, then the feet, legs, and other limbs remain more vague.  I have to wonder where the person still has to go in their lifetime and what it is they have left to accomplish…

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 4:30 pm and is filed under daily pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.