On the Friday, the drawing wasn't going quickly, but it was going fairly well. M- is such a remarkable model. He always reminds me of Rodin's "Burghers of Calais" sculptures. He was really playing with how much stretching or contraction of his limbs he was doing within the poses. In a couple he was really eating up the space.
Even if I left the heads undrawn, M- 's poses are visually striking. Getting a likeness is, in my mind, a part of the "price of admission" to drawing someone. The likeness is the icing on the cake of what makes them recognisably them. I am not always successful, but it is gratifying when the heads work well and look like the person, too. There is no law whatsoever that decrees accuracy of likeness as the measure of a successful drawing, but for me, accurate likeness with feeling in the work is high on my list. That's why I tend to think of my own mindset as a realist portrait orientation, with the whole body being part of that portrait.
These are all 15-minute studies, drawn on 24" x 36" sheets of newsprint with HB Conte crayon. The furniture details were often elaborated while M- was taking breaks from posing.
In the half-torso study, the head looks to me a lot like the actor Pete Postlethwaite, which isn't entirely the wrong ballpark, (but not exactly a home run, either...).
I think this is some of your best work yet!
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