Jeff Whipple Figure Drawing

This is one of my favorite life drawings. Lisa was a great model and quite a pretty woman. She modeled for a Saturday morning session at a Sarasota art center where I did this drawing. The drawing is successful on several levels. It was a long pose, probably an hour. Lisa had to take breaks after twenty minute segments. Her pose was marked with charcoal on the cloth she sat on so she could find her way back into the pose after each break. (The poses are never perfectly recreated so that makes it tricky if you’ve drawn the hand half way and it’s not exactly in the same place after her break.) The long pose gave me time to really analyze the proportions and get them correct. I often come close on proportions but getting them as accurate as this one is tough work. It’s a good likeness but what I’m most happy about is the figure’s placement on the page. Notice how the figure fills out the paper to all of the edges. That may look like it’s supposed to be that way but it’s extremely difficult to do. If you don’t plan ahead and just start drawing you’ll likely either be way too small for the paper size or you’ll go off the edges with some parts of the figure. This composition is nearly perfect. If the figure was just slightly to the left and there was a little space between the toe on the right side and the edge of the paper, it’d be perfect. This was done with a sharp point ebony pencil so every line and shade is evident in the rendering.