Double Portrait

 

3/8/24 graphite and ArtGraf water-soluble graphite on Canson XL mixed media paper

I lost my only sister in 2011. She was 65 years old, the same age I am now. I have been thinking about Linda more than usual this year.

Our homework last week in Gal Cohen’s class was to make more overlapping-portrait drawings like the ones we worked on during class. Although she had provided us with more reference photos we could work with, I dug through my own digital photo folders instead. I found one of Linda that had been taken a few months before she died. Then I looked through some photos of myself that Greg had taken at my request when I was working on self-portraits.

Although people often used to tell us that we both resembled our dad or at least had some of his features, it wasn’t until I started drawing her that I realized how similar our noses and eyebrows are. Drawing never fails to show me something I had previously overlooked.