#46 completed. Pregnant Nude created with 1000's of gel pen marks

I think I have finished this piece. 

Life Coming Through Her
Gel Pen on Paper
13"x20"
$850 unframed

            

A friend looked at this image yesterday, looked at me quizically and challenged, "Susan, this seems like an anti-abortion piece." I didn't know how to respond.  I am not against abortion. I am deeply in favor of a woman's right to choose what is right for her. And I am deeply in love with pregnancy and birth and babies, and especially with my own precious children.  I am very thankful I never had to decide whether to have an abortion or not. And I am equally thankfully that some of my friends did have that option and were able to take it and save the arch of their lives and that of their unborn children from the chaos and suffering that would have ensued had the children come into this world.

To me, this piece is about the sanctity of life. Absolutely. The woman portrayed in this piece chose to become pregnant and was deeply happy to be carrying her child. It was the right thing for her at the right time in her life (at least as far as I know based on the conversations we had. I can't begin to assert I know everything in her heart or mind!) My intention with this piece is to portray a beautiful woman at one of the most beautiful times of her life as she prayerfully considers her unborn child. It evokes for me that time in my own life when I felt my children inside my womb, when my body was a vessel for their body and their spirit. This piece feels very calm and centered, as I felt when creating it. The repetition of the marks created a calmness in me that gave rise to contemplation and quiet joy.

But a posterchild for anti-abortion?  No.

An image of the sanctity of life. Yes.

I think most people could agree that life is sacred and that giving birth to a wanted child is one of the most sacred acts a person can do. The grey area comes, I think, from other situations - ones where the child is not wanted, or the woman can't care for the child and lives in fear and poverty with it, or the child is a product of rape or coercion - then what?

I don't have the answer. I wish we could find common ground here, though, for the conversation. It's complicated. Complex. There is no simple answer. The moral complexities are daunting. Each person will have personal experiences which inform their responses/reactions. How different our country could be if we could sit with each other and confer with gentle curiosity and a desire to learn from each other about these difficult questions - with compassion for the challenges and difficulties, with awareness and respect for the blessing that each child can be, with a willingness to hear many different facets of a situation. When we know a person's story and understand their motivations and challenges, it becomes so much more difficult to judge them. 

Can you begin to imagine a world where life is sacred, and each life is honored, and women are trusted to make decisions for themselves and their unborn children? It is SO complex to even try to imagine it - it feels risky to even ask the question!

The beginning. I saw an image in National
Geographic which wouldn't leave me alone, so
I decided to include it in the piece.
My attempt here was to create marks which
would create a sense of volume around the belly.

The marks I made on the left to create
a sense of depth and darness weren't
dark enough because gel pens don't
come in very dark values!  I used
ink here to deepen the value contrast.

Working to fill the page with marks. I
wanted to have the marks indicate the
volume of each bady part.

By this point, it was painfully
obvious to me that the dark was much too
dark and contrasted too strongly with
the rest of the piece. But I liked the breasts
and hands.

I lightened the darks by putting blue into
them so they weren't so dominant.

I strengthened the lights so they stood out more and increased some of the depth,
refined what I could. It is now finally reading as I want it to and feels like I've said
what I wanted to say with it: the pregnant body is gorgeous. Life is sacred. 

#44 and #45 of 100 Creations in 100 Days: Pregnant Nudes done in unconventional ways

#44

One of the very first drawings I did as an adult. This was me,
pregnant with my daughter. It made me so happy to draw this
piece with the finely detailed blinds and their shadows which
helped created the roundness of the belly.

When I first started doing art, the first set of imagery I settled in on to explore was pregnant nudes. Their shapes were so pleasureable to render - the light and shadow played exquisitely on the rounded forms of breasts and belly.

Another of my very early pieces.
The high contrast image thrilled me
to draw.

That was almost 20 years ago, and suddenly I find myself interested in exploring it again.  I'd been looking at a lot of Aboriginal art (I have tons of images on my Pinterest page here if you're interested) and began to wonder how it would be to try those types of marks on a figure. I started playing in my Visual Journal and on Mi Tientes drawing paper using gel pens in the first image, #44, and a gold gel pen and black Micron 08 in the second, #45.

#44 took me hours to create because I had to draw so many small marks, and I had to think about which value I wanted to create and how to create it with flourescent colors. Their intensity is so strong, the sense of value is almost erased. It was a terrific exercise for me!

#45

#45 was very different.  I took the knowledge I'd gained from doing #44 and used the pens to make rapid marks to describe the form and either a light or dark pen to describe the value, leaving the paper's color itself to serve as the middle tone.  I was excited when I was finished to see how transparent the body appeared, yet also how substantial.  It was an interesting mix for me.