This piece was completed in 2019 as the final project for my figure drawing class my Sophomore year at VCU.
The course- and my professor specifically- placed a focus on the figure in motion. Our class drawings often included our live model moving through a representation of their day- beginning in a pose that slowly shifted or morphed and our drawings followed, depicting a kind of animation on the page.
I greatly enjoyed these exercises, the fast but fluid pace helped me gain confidence in my figure drawing- it directed my focus to capturing the gesture that would convey the entire movement. This is also one of the first times I leaned into drawing with color and began using a deliberate color pattern that echoed the repetitive and cyclical nature of our waking- to action- to sleep- to waking poses.
The final project for the class was to expand on this ‘Day in the Life’ concept into a large-scale self portrait using a wide range of mediums and techniques that were introduced in the course.
Before beginning this piece, I had to decide what sort of story or ‘day’ I would be portraying. The simple cycles of waking and sleeping that we created in our drawing sessions really connected with me. I love sleep. I loved the comfort and retreat of my small bed in my crowded dorm room. I was falling in love with the peace of curling up and closing my eyes in a sunny spot in the middle of the day. The methodical process of waking, taking the slow steps to actually feel awake, living your day, and then coming back and laying down into the comfort of sleep again. What was left then was to decide how I would depict the actual day. At the time, my days were rather repetitive with a schedule of classes and work, and my world pretty small- as I clearly preferred to stay home in my bed.
My need for reference images actually determined the type of poses I would use. Over the course of two or three days, I worked to collect the images that I would be using to plan and complete my self portrait.
I preferred taking short videos actually. I didn’t want to bother my roommates with taking my photo over and over again, and the idea of using the self timer on my phone to -maybe- capture the pose I wanted seemed infuriating. By taking the videos, I was able to prop up the camera and take my time to recreate the stretches and yawns of rolling out of bed, capture tiny movements of pinning my hair and putting on my rings before leaving the house, or even seeing what I look like when I’m toweling my hair off after a shower. I also found that a pose from a paused video, the brief pause between motions, created much more true to life images.
These were all moments in between the ‘events’ of my day. Periods of solitude where I would stop and think “oh, I do this action almost every day, I should capture it”. (The one exception being the volleyball pose. I had my teammate record me on the court for a moment, I think I wanted to include it because I had just started to play again and was excited to represent it as a part of my life again.)
Then I isolated all of the images I wanted to use- 18 figure poses and 2 hand details, I brought them into Photoshop and began playing with the specific layout I wanted to create. I returned to my figure drawing page that felt the most fluid and complete. It was a circle, an endless rotation of dawn and dusk. That is what I wanted in my final piece as well. I was also drawn particularly to the images when I came home from my morning classes to water my plants and then take a break to lay beneath them in the sun. This moment would be the middle of my ‘day’ and thus the sleep in the sun would mirror the sleep in the dark of my ‘night’.
To begin the final piece, the class was instructed to use a 30 x 44 in. sheet of heavy weight paper and trace the outline of our reference images from a projector. At the time, I was hesitant about using the projector- it felt like cheating (which realistically I know is silly, it’s not cheating to use a tool you’ve been given). But in hindsight, I am grateful the professor granted us this step. Without the worry of proportions and correct placement of each pose, I could instead focus on how I wanted to render the figures.
I did not have a specific plan as to how I would render each pose, just that I wanted to display all of the different mediums I had been practicing in and out of this figure class. The mediums I would use included: graphite pencils- from contour lines to full tone shading, colored pencils, micron pen, ballpoint pen, ink dip pen and ink wash, watercolor paint washes and full color, cut paper, and even silver leaf foil. Combining all of these aspects into a cohesive piece felt daunting but I decided to just move forward with the goal of incorporating as many of the bright colors I had come to love in the class’s drawing sessions into the final piece.
I began with the poses done in full tone graphite, I knew these would be the most polished and realistic of the mediums so I spread them throughout the composition.
Next, I started the center sleeping figure watercolor as I knew her size and position would make her a focal point of the piece and I wanted to be sure it informed the rest of the color choices.
I moved through the rest of the poses and mediums in a methodical madness- going away from and returning to poses throughout the process to bring them to the level of finish I wanted. The time I spent on the actual final piece spanned about a week and a half, but of course the bulk of the progress occurred in the last three days before it was due (as was my way unfortunately).
Near the end of the process I began adding more design elements that connected different aspects of the piece. This mainly includes the burst of plant life behind the center figure- where the sun is bright and they are getting watered by another figure. I wanted to expand those elements across the entire top of the page with sprigs of ivy and ferns peeking out behind the poses. In an effort to do something similar with the night half, I painted a floating starry sky in the center of the page.
And my final detail- as I was the most nervous for it- was to place silver leaf foil on the rings of my hands. My purpose for including that close up of my hands in this portrait was to bring to light the significance I feel in the meditative moment I have every morning as I put on my rings. I am so happy with how the silver leaf turned out, the simplification of the ring forms and the shine that sets them apart from the graphite hands was the perfect detail.
Looking at this piece now, more than five years later, it really feels like a time capsule. The work is both a snapshot of specific moments in my life, while also foreshadowing aspects of myself and my art that have grown with me.
Written October 2024