Staande vrouw met haar armen over elkaar c. 1915s - 1925s

Isaac Israels made this drawing of a standing woman, with her arms crossed, likely using graphite on paper. Look at how Israels uses these sketchy lines to describe not just the form of the figure, but the space around her. It’s like he's thinking through the act of drawing itself. The texture is all in these hatched marks, a real push-pull between dark and light. Notice how the density of the lines changes to suggest depth and shadow. There's something so immediate and raw about the process, almost like a shorthand for seeing. That repeated stroke gives a sense of both structure and movement, creating a rhythm. Israels' contemporary, Edgar Degas, also used hatching in his drawings. These artists invite us to consider art not as a window onto the world, but as a conversation with it. What do you think?