Drawn at Soho Life Drawing, both around 20 minute poses. After a few struggles trying to capture some of Tatiana’s exquisite, classical poses in sanguine pencil, I switched to vine charcoal – which is usually a bit too messy and clumsy for paper of this size. But what it did allow me to do was stop trying to capture detail, and use loose, movable sweeps of shadow to define the main areas of light in relief. I probably looked incredibly awkward as I tried my hardest to squint away anything other than the main sweep of the figure. Only after I felt like I had the broad proportions laid down did I try to use some more specific marks to round out the musculature of the back and the lower body. At this scale, I didn’t feel like I wanted to refine these any further. I added some white chalk pencil to capture the top-down lighting in the room and create some lift from the paper.