image (c) Lisa Town

In doing some cleaning I came across a large, newsprint pad that I literally hadn’t touched in 10 years. It was full of figure studies I’d done with a big fat and soft graphite stick, mostly trying to capture mood or movement and not so much perfect realism. I’ve found myself over the last couple years drawn to the sketchbooks and studies of great artists (loved the old sketchbooks from Picasso that I saw in Barcelona last year!) so it was interesting to rediscover some old, forgotten drawings of my own.

This particular drawing was completed in the late 90’s and while not necessarily the best of the bunch, I found myself drawn to it’s character and the hurried fashion of the drawing style. I don’t know whether this is a man or a woman, or if I drew it from model or mind. I do remember thinking back then of what a drawing might look like in trying to portray a still, sitting body that had a restless mind. The pad had several studies but the eyes in this one capture a sadness the others didn’t, like a longing to move but a tension in the hands suggests the inability to do so. Lots of big quick strokes moved over and over the figure almost creating a blurred edge with the mind moving outside the lines of the otherwise still figure.