Master Drawings of the Human Figure

Drawing is intrinsic for those who want to see, as essential as breathing.
Van Gogh wrote, "In spite of everything I shall rise again:


I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing." and I suppose many of us that draw have felt the same bereavement for images that have lost their direction to end up piled with the 'almosts'. It is those drawings though that lead us back to more because we know we're closer to something which carries meaning. From Rembrandt's love of Saskia,


to his felt empathy and compassion, we look at his work and connect. Drawing does this magical human thing.


I've placed a handful of images here which have influenced and cultivated my aesthetics, connected with my sense of humanity, and encouraged hope in my own work.


For artists, drawing is thinking made visible. It is a direct line from heart and mind to hand.


Whether using pencil, pastel, chalk, ink, or mixed media, as thought evolves so does the image. It moves from the general towards the specific, searching for what is most intuitive and in that discovery, most profound. Like a heartbeat, these images hold life.
I remember seeing this Rubens before I knew that I would be an artist.


I was maybe fifteen, but I saw it in one of my mother's art books and instantly felt a part of that world. I understood it, in some sense I was it.


You feel art, you live it, and drawing, because it frequently comes in the form of simpler tools and means, connects as if the shoe lace has just been tied and one is now ready for a walk.
This image by Michelangelo was perhaps one of the calmer drawings I looked at and loved,


but there were many others like these that moved me profoundly.






That in effect, pointed back to me and let me understand myself more deeply.

From the simple,

to the complex,


drawings are personal, instinctive, sensual, and powerful. It's a bit like waking up after a bad cold and suddenly feeling better, more awake, more alive! Whether older masters or newer works.
From Schiele's work:


to Kollwitz:

Picasso's:

to Moore's:


whether I go back in time to Tintoretto or Mantegna:





or leap forwards to Giacometti and Frank Auerbach:




or even further to Mazur and Lopez Garcia:





or to Lucian Freud, you'll find a similar humanity, a willingness to search.

From the quiet beauty of Corinth's sleeping wife,

to Kollwitz's images of self:


and into the heart,



it comes back to us. Drawing is for us.