Little Aurore (Petite Aurore) 1923

This is "Little Aurore," a drawing by Henri Matisse. You can see he’s used a kind of frantic scribbling to model the figure and the background. It's a way of seeing – and making – where everything is alive and vibrating, and nothing is precisely still. I love how Matisse uses hatching to create volume. Notice the varying pressure and density of the lines that define Aurore's body. See how the cross-hatching around her legs creates a sense of depth and shadow. There’s something about the way he builds up the tone in layers of marks, that gives the figure a real solidity. Matisse's mark-making reminds me of Picasso, especially his earlier drawings. Both artists had this incredible ability to distill form into its most essential elements. With a few simple lines, they could capture the essence of a subject. Like all good art, "Little Aurore" leaves space for our imaginations to fill in the gaps.