Drawing

I looked at a video from North Light of artist Joy Thomas teaching how to draw the clothed figure a few days ago: she spoke about and demonstrated the importance of selecting a good model with appropriate and diverse changes of dress, and establishing the allowed time for a portrait (three hours?); of preparing the paper with charcoal dust (sprinkling, rubbing it in); of isolating the space on the canvas that the artist wants to use; of sizing the figure and transferring one's measurements to the canvas (a ruler or a pencil can be used to establish a canon--say how many human heads go into the total human figure from top to bottom, left to right: it's about seven or eight, depending on the effect one wants--ordinary or heroic); of identifying the structures in the portrait to be painted (the lines, the circles and squares, the shifts in form); and beginning with a preliminary sketch to warm up (something that can be easily erased with a certain kind of cloth); of trying to capture just enough detail to suggest the figure and allowing the viewer to complete the picture; of the importance of "marking" the positions of the model (with charcoal or with removable tape) before she or he takes a break, etcetera.  It was an illustration of how much thought and work goes into art, even into a simply drawn portrait.