I actually started ideas for this one before my last one on ambiguity, and began slowly drawing it out about 2 weeks ago. I'd been looking back at Diebenkorn figure drawings and loved the way he left lines from body positions that had since changed. I've also been blown away looking at Jenny Saville multi-layered drawings - so I thought I'd include both those influences in various degrees.
I have this series of photos of Gretchen and Nicolau from maybe 15-20 years ago... he met us at Whole Foods and I just shot photos of them as they caught up after not having seen eachother for a year or so. Their rapport is always so immediately in sync and in a way intimate - it astounds me each time. So I've wanted to do a drawing to capture this... I could do several more actually. But here are a couple stages of this one.
In this preliminary stage it's well underway... I'd just added a layer of him reaching over as they hold hands,but then realized it was in the wrong place. It erased mostly well, and I just left the original outlines faintly visible. I'm happy with the final result