Life Drawing

Life drawing has been a recurring discipline throughout my career as an artist - returned to at intervals, set aside, and returned to again. It is, for me, the most demanding and the most honest form of drawing: there is nowhere to hide when the model is in front of you. I work in several media - pencil, charcoal, and the trois crayons technique, in which sanguine, black, and white chalk are used together on neutral-toned paper. This three-colour method, with its roots in the ateliers of Rubens and Watteau, has a particular warmth and directness that suits the figure well. The sanguine carries the flesh; the black anchors the form; the white lifts and breathes.
Life drawing asks you to look harder than you think you already are. That, as much as anything, is why I keep coming back to it.