Cubistic nude graphite pencil drawing

Nude – 03-06-16

A Rather Unusual Pose

This graphite pencil drawing ‘Nude – 03-06-16’ is part of the Roundism series. Last artwork was ‘Thermonuclear Goddess – 01-06-16 (Sold)’ including wonderful model Julia Filament. Now it was time to depict my regular model again. We go back quite some time now. The first time I drew her was during a live drawing session in 2013 at Brugman Art.  Still a delight to have her over to pose for me. This time I had her lean backwards a bit. The result is a rather unusual pose, not to mention most challenging.

Not Too Clumpy

The difficult thing was to render the female body position in this way not too clumpy. Arms, rump and legs tightly packed together are inclined to give birth to such an image. Therefore I opened up the positive form a bit. Her knee, buttocks and face I let open, so they can breathe into the negative space. Next to this, I took extra care of a correct depiction of the hands and foot. They press down the blankets on which she sits. So I drew all the necessary folds in order for the spectactor to interpret the scenery the right way. Sometimes you have to show only that much so viewers won’t get lost in the drawing. They migh refute it for the wrong reasons!

Cubism and Surrealism

There are some aspects of roundism that I incorporared. Somehow I thought I’d rather not apply an abundance of cubist styling. As such, the drawing tends towards surrealism as well. Perhaps that’s due to the unusual pose combined with the distorted body forms. Anyway, I am pleased with the tonal rhythym across the drawing.

Graphite pencil (Pentel 0.5 mm, 3B) on Canson Bristol paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm – A4 format)

Artist: Corné Akkers