pencil drawing by Ray Patrick
Three graphite head studies of the same model on one sheet, each lying in its own band of worked tone, one at the top cropped by the edge of the paper.
The three run diagonally down the sheet in parallel bands, each study boxed in its own rectangle of shading with bare paper between. The construction lines of a fourth, abandoned, run across the lower right.
Graphite on white, from a dense black ground in the middle study to a light, open hatch in the lower one. No mid-tone is laid flat; everything is built from line.
The grounds are hatched in long parallel strokes that stay visible as line rather than closing into tone, and the heads are cut out of them by leaving the paper bare. The method is subtractive in effect though nothing is erased.
Graphite on paper, three studies, dated in pencil at the right. A studio photograph of a sheet of studies rather than a single picture.
No signature legible at this scale.