Nine

This sketch reflects so many ahas and influences from the Taos workshop. It's where I learned that painting is like poetry, don't copy what you see, show how light spills over your subject like a waterfall. Show what caught your eye, what you think is beautiful, what made you fall in love. You should have seen the way the light fell on her face, her chest, and down her arm, like this, like this, like this...

When this dancer became too dark and dull I was shown how to push the shadows, brighten them, in order to get more of a sense of light. That was so different than how I normally dealt with shadow. And when I struggled with the lips as I always do Sherrie showed me, in just three strokes, how lips are a temperature change not a value change. Another optical illusion between what we think we see and what is real.

I realized in posting this sketch how my 100 Heads project has come full circle. I started not knowing how to draw a face and wanting to learn so I copied some of my favorite drawings by Sherrie McGraw. I never knew then that I would end up taking a workshop with her where she would dab the lips onto my own painting.