2/27/25, x2 18x24, paper, charcoal, Indian ink
This was another prompt from my figure drawing class prior to the ‘embrace’ series. I was encouraged to use new methods of drawing and creating that I had never tried before, and my professor showed me a drawing technique called the averted gaze. In addition to using the averted gaze method for the actual drawings, this was also my first time using Indian ink, which I diluted into 3 different shades to achieve the shading. For the piece on the left, I started with the shading of myself in the mirror using the 3 shades of the ink, then I used the averted gaze to draw myself without looking at the page. For the piece on the right, I had my partner pose in 10 different poses, 5 standard figure sketches, and 5 utilizing averted gaze. Then, I isolated all the different elements of her face, and sketched them around the page, in different spaces. One element that was important personally when creating these pieces was being personal. The textures were achieved using different methods (i.e. thumb smearing, fingerprint dotting, layering, etc.) Using these methods culminated into these final parallel pieces.