In this colored pencil drawing ‘Neo Deco – 23-03-26’ my cubist style is meeting minimalism. Executed in white colored pencil only. Perhaps you wouldn’t notice the difference between other similar works I made in the past and this one. More than a year ago I made a pastel drawing using the same Clairfontaine Noir paper. This became ‘Neo Deco – 12-01-25’. It’s a bit similar even though I had plans to execute this one in color as well. I simply liked the forms I found whilst drawing that much, I didn’t find color to add something.
Let Them Breathe
The reason might also that I had this initial plan. The razorlight from the right challenged me to show only that much to enable the viewer to detect the bodyscape. Not too much, not too little. Were I to have thrown color schemes into the mix, it would have distracted the attention from my very aim. Using this kind of black paper always brings me back to an earlier pastel, called ‘Pastel Study 02 (2013)’. I still think I managed to keep forms open in that one. Just let them breathe into the blackness of the paper. Something similar I did in this one, even though it’s cubist of nature evidentially.
5th Cubist Nude
The 5th cubist nude on a square paper already and I quite get the hang of it. Last one was satisfying to do yet a bit less challenging compared to this one. The model’s pose at hand was full of angles and other sharp forms. Therefor it lended itself to be interpreted in my personal cubist style. A wonderful project to do but at the end I faced a challenge nevertheless.
In a Jam
Somehow I found myself a bit in a jam. In order to round up the foot at the right I was in need of a big white structure. Obviously that’s the floor she sits on. Putting it in might disturb the overall composition and draw the attention too much into the right corner. Reluctantly I decided to make that choice. That’s why I put my signature in the upper left corner to balance this out. Putting it in the right corner felt more natural to me because there is much more space there. Now I think I got away with it, avoiding disturbing compositionary elements. Last but not least, I threw in one single loose hair dangling down. It’s the only structure in the entire drawing that’s curved.
Colored pencil drawing on Clairfontaine Paint On Mix Media noir paper (21 x 21 x 0.1 cm)
Artist: Corné Akkers
