The Dancer

Charcoal on Moonstone, 20"x 13", August 2019. Drawn from life.

Megan is a ballerina, and I tried really  hard to bring some of her grace into the portrait. This portrait has some micro-muscles visible, and no outlines. Removing the outline was a big leap for me. I realized that doing so made the portrait far more realistic -- it softened the whole image, and allowed the details to stand out more clearly. To draw the micro muscles required me to sharpen my charcoal; I hadn't tried this before. Instead of sharpening it to a chisel, I sharpened it to a point (all of my portraits in the past had been drawn with a chisel-tip charcoal). This made it much easier to add really tiny details and shadows.

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