Branching out

This woman came by the studio today to help me take my mind off the Mets.

Boy did she. Endy who?



In the interest of accuracy, I should say she came by the studio to help me take my mind off the Mets by posing for me.

This is part of what we came up with, she and I:



I remember my first year in college, traipsing around the hallowed grounds of the University of Virginia, feeling all that... all that Jefferson. More specifically, I remember getting to my first art class--Life Drawing 101 may not have been what it was actually called, but you get the picture--and sitting there, charcoal in hand, listening to the professor rattle on for a while. Then, from a door at the side of the room emerged a woman in a bathrobe. She walked up to the raised platform at the front of the studio, took off her bathrobe and sat down. The professor said, "Begin!"

Begin what? I thought to myself. Does anyone else know she's naked?

Apparently they didn't care one way or another. They were all scratching away on their pads, some with their tongues stuck out of the side of their mouthes, a la Michael Jordan on his way to the hoop.

It was at this point when I finally realized I was in college. The rest all just fell into place.

Anyway, there's an awful lot to be said for drawing the human body. Applying charcoal to paper being a vastly different artistic experience to flinging paint onto canvas. Rembrandt, I'm not.

So this is me branching out.



I think it's going well. I do, however, have to figure out how to get her head in the picture. When I expressed my frustration to the model herself, she suggested I start with the head.

Hmmm. Interesting theory.