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Kelly Borsheim's Art of the Human Form - Charcoal Figure Drawing Écorché -- The Flaming Archer 64 x 46 cm (25" x 18") charcoal / carboncino Firenze-brand paper © 2008 Kelly Borsheim $2400 Buy Notecards of this image

"Écorché -- The Flaming Archer" - Original Charcoal Drawing An Écorché is an artist's tool, basically a plaster human figure without the skin. It is used to study the musculature and anatomy of the human form. Artist Kelly Borsheim used the sight-size method to create the drawing shown on this page of an archer Écorché. This drawing was created on white Firenze-brand paper using the sight-size method of drawing. There is no white added to this charcoal drawing. The lightest areas are the pure paper showing through.

In this case, the plaster sculpture of the archer is larger than the paper for the drawing. So, in order to use the sight-size method, the drawing board had to be placed forward enough in front of the model so that from the viewing distance (about two meters) the model and the drawing appear to be the same size. First the height is drawn, then the bottom is determined. Sides, and so on, until the outline of the figure has been drawn to match the model's shape and size.

Here you can see the setup when the drawing is almost completed. The artist observes from the viewing point, then walks up to the drawing board to make her mark. Then she turns around and returns to the viewing point to determine if the mark was accurate. If not, redo. There is a lot of walking or pacing back and forth in the sight-size method of drawing. Healthy art ;-) The charcoal drawing cannot possibly have the full range of tone as compared to what our eye can see in the original. However, some of the art tricks we use allow the viewers to not think about these things. In a similar way that a sculptor compresses the form to create a bas relief sculpture, so the two-dimensional artist compresses the tone to match the possible range of the drawing materials used. Note how controlled the lighting is. If a window in the room (or even, in some cases, the next room) is changed to alter the light in the room, all is lost. Also, even something as seemingly simple as the height of the artist's shoes must stay the same. Otherwise, one corrects the work from days before, only to feel incredibly frustrated to realize that all the changes are wrong, once the original pair of shoes is worn again in the studio. Yes, it is quite an exacting process. However, this trains the hand, eye, brain communication triangle like no other exercise!

After removing the drawing from the setup, Kelly adds some final touches before photographing her artwork.

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Kelly Borsheim Borsheim Arts Studio P. O. Box 340 Cedar Creek, Texas 78612 (512) 303-3929 www.borsheimarts.com