Figure Drawing circa 1990

One of a handful of drawings I kept from my foundation year at Otis (then Otis/Parsons), definitely the most grueling year of my life.  We had a six-hour figure drawing class every week, which included about 15 hours per week of homework (including drawing ourselves nude).  Our teacher, Gary Geraths, taught us to draw the figure from the inside out, starting with the skeleton.  We would have a live model in front of us, but as you looked at all the drawing boards, they were filled with skeletons.  By the end of the first semester we finally had worked up to adding muscle, and then skin.  In this drawing you can see some of the bone and muscle structure the drawing started with.  We used large scale paper to be able to get more precise with the forms. The model had to hold this pose for several hours (plus breaks), which is probably why she is lying down.  I remember she had a navel piercing, which I had never seen before but thought was really cool.