Portrait of Salome Andronnikova 1922

Alexandre Jacovleff made this portrait of Salome Andronnikova using sanguine. It's a gorgeous reddish-brown chalk drawing on paper and I imagine him standing at an easel, maybe making tiny adjustments to the pose, squinting at the model, and stepping back to see how it’s all coming together. I wonder if he knew Salome well, because the drawing has a softness, a gentleness to it. There’s an incredible delicacy in the way he’s rendered the folds of her dress and the way the light catches on her cheekbone. You can see these tentative lines around her head and shoulders, a kind of halo effect, giving a sense of movement, capturing not just her likeness but maybe something of her essence, too. Jacovleff captures this balance between precision and fluidity that I find so appealing. It reminds me how much drawing is about feeling and seeing. It's about being present in the moment and letting your hand follow your eye. Artists, you know, we're all just trying to figure things out, learning from each other, one mark at a time.