Saturday, December 23, 2006

Life Drawing of a Young Woman #3 (1982)

When I began to show my chalk pastel life drawings, people commented that they reminded them of color photo negatives. It occurs to me now that with digital cameras there is no negative and that soon, if not already, the idea of a photo negative will not be understood without explanation. All these early drawings were photographed by me with a Minolta 7s camera. The colors are amazingly true. Until this last year, I photographed all my work with that camera. It is light enough outside now to see that the sky is a bluish grey. I can hear light rain. I remember reading that Georgia O'Keeffe used to paint her rooms grey because the colors in her drawings and paintings appeared with greater intensity when there was a grey background. That is what happens to colors on a grey day in the Northwest.

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