Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is an Italian word that means light to dark.  A chiaroscuro drawing is more visually real than an outline or contour drawing, because we don't actually see outlines around forms but we do see darks and lights.  Jesse was sleeping this morning , rolling over every few minutes.  I decided to draw only the darks and skim over the patches of light, allowing the form to emerge by itself in this way.

It's not so easy to do a chiaroscuro drawing if you like to nail things down, as I do.  I had to keep resisting the urge to fence in the form with firm outlines (to which I would then add values, sort of in the manner of coloring in a coloring book).  I started at the darkest place on Jesse and worked out from there.  Sometimes I didn't get very far because he would roll over just when I was getting into the drawing.  Some, like 4346, are hard to make out.  There is a little grin line that can hint at what's going on there, just as the ear forms hint at the head in 4347.