Artist and Model

A glimpse into life at our house. It’s what you always suspected, isn’t it?

However. My wife would have me point out that:
a) she didn’t know I was drawing her and
b) she WAS NOT NAKED.

Well. Ingres’ advice to the young Degas was to draw “many lines. From memory and from nature.” So that’s what I did here. My wife is an incorrigible multitasker. So you often see her sitting in one of these awkward twisted poses so that she can instantly uncoil and attack some project she had left to one side a few minutes before. When I saw her sitting like that, I knew that this was what I was looking for. So I scribbled down a quick drawing. Naked. Because we’ve been together long enough that I know what that looks like. It’s in my head somewhere.

That was just one part of making this picture, so I thought I’d take some time here to walk you through the whole process.

Lockdown has brought some serious tidying and decluttering to our house. In the process we rediscovered a bundle of plain calico shopping bags. Ideal for printing something on, we thought. That’s where this started. I wanted something to convey the idea of “Art” to go on a bag. Something maybe quite logo-like. But as often happens with these things, it spiralled beyond its original motivation.

Here are the original ideas for composition. Dating from mid-October.

I felt the first was too horizontal, so I went for a more elevated viewpoint like you get sometimes in Schiele or Degas. At this stage I was thinking of using the wee figures for the composition and producing something fairly anonymous. But then I thought maybe I could try and make it into a self portrait. I’d got in my mind that painting by Kirchner where he’s stood in a garish dressing gown and the model is sat behind him in her underwear thinking, “Hey. I thought this was supposed to be a painting of me!” Anyway. I began thinking of putting myself in the picture as the artist.

These ideas had been swirling round in my head for maybe two or three weeks when I saw my wife sitting like that. This is the quick drawing I did.

Things then started to move quite quickly. I’ve only noticed this recently, but thinking back, its always been there, though maybe suppressed by the world of work. When the ideas begin to flow, I get quite fidgety. I pace up and down, fiddle with things, wave my arms around. It’s kinda like being possessed. Over the next couple days the drawings started coming fast.

Here are some early-morning drawings of my face and hand, and then my body in dressing gown as a nod to Kirchner.

Here are some drawings of the “hardware”. The Chair and Easel. It wasn’t the easel I originally had in mind, but it was in the house, so I didn’t have to go out in the cold and dark to get the big one.

I also began working up the drawing for the nude model. You will notice that I gave her two left feet in this drawing. People insist on moving about, especially if they don’t know you’re drawing them. Anyway. I fixed that before it was too late.

Also my wife’s hair is pretty distinctive. It’s still quite dark on top, but the underneath has gone quite grey. She often pushes her hair back behind her ear, revealing a shock of white at the side. This is my quick drawing trying to capture the shape of that.

It was then a case of bringing all these parts together. Scaling the different elements, cutting them up and reassembling them. Here’s the version I traced on to the block. It was only at this stage that I noticed I’d got the feet wrong, so I corrected that on the block.

I always had in my mind that mirror image you get as the final print. As this was me as the artist, I wanted to ensure I’d be right-handed in the final print. So I made sure I drew my right hand in the mirror, switching between posing and drawing. Hence it’s a pencil in my hand in that original drawing, not a brush. Compositionally, everything else followed from that hand.

I’m pleased with the result. It is quite tense and awkward. not an easy, relaxed picture. Kinda like the process of making it.