5 Nudes: Maud

Five life drawings of one model

Maud in Gold (crop) © Simon Goss MA 2022

Maud is an enigma to me. I have found it virtually impossible to capture her striking features in any way that I feel is successful. Classically beautiful, she has incredibly strong cheekbones, full lips and a strong jaw.

Allied to pale eyebrows and lashes it makes for a frustrating experience every time I’ve drawn her, and has now become a mental block that I struggle to overcome. She is a fabulous model that I am yet to fully do justice to, despite producing an otherwise satisfying and eclectic collection of drawings of her.

Maud is red-haired and generously freckled, with an hourglass figure that she invariably holds elegantly. As I have only drawn her on Zoom, I am still a little uncertain about the colour of her eyes. I usually assume blue, but they also sometimes appear as green. Either way, they dazzle in contrast with her pale skin. I first drew Maud via a life drawing group based in the Netherlands while she, a French woman, was posing in Lanzarote. Such was the exotic nature of online life drawing that began during the Covid lockdowns.

1 Maud

Maud © Simon Goss MA 2021

I’ve really gone to town in naming this piece! Despite my getting Maud’s hair colouring completely wrong here, it being far too dull a brown to represent her auburn flames, I am still happy with the feel of the drawing with its restrained colouring. It reminds me of an advert illustration from the fifties, though I can’t imagine what they might have been advertising!

The drawing style is light and almost florid and the features a little cartoonish, but I feel it works well in conjunction with the limited palette of Warm Red and the background of pale Cerulean cast shadows.

The figure sits well on the page and you can feel the weight coming through the hip and leaning on the slightly bent elbow. The hand is a little rustic but I like to think you are distracted from it by the strength of the Scarlet knee opposite. This was a fifteen minute drawing and all the better for the brevity this constrained time forced upon me.

Maud (crop) © Simon Goss MA 2021

2 Maud Relaxed

Maud Relaxed © Simon Goss MA 2021

Another light handling of this five minute pose, almost as if I’m afraid of making too dark a mark on the paper. The marks I have made, however, are confident and flowing, conveying the wonderful, relaxed pose of a woman completely at home in her skin. I seem to be inspired to draw with rounder lines than I usually use by the inherent curviness of Maud’s magnificent figure.

The shading is a sparse crosshatch that indicates the light coming from near her left leg, casting a shadow on her chest and outer hip. I like the way her stockinged legs float off the end of the paper, adding a dynamic to the drawing it might otherwise lack. This is drawn with an 8B Graphitone (soluble graphite) stick on A3 Seawhite cartridge paper, washed over with plain water to blend the lines and deepen the shadows.

3 Maud Twist

Maud Twist © Simon Goss MA 2021

This pastel drawing is crammed onto an A3 format as if I found it hard to contain her on the paper. It would have been at most a ten minute pose, and I have reworked Maud’s side and somewhat squashed bottom to capture the curve of the spine. I like the gusto of the marks I have made here despite the drawing’s shortcomings — the clumsy hand and the ill-disciplined hatching. Sometimes, however, a drawing is about capturing the essence of the pose and I believe I have done that here. It might help that I can’t see her face from this viewpoint!

4 Maud in Gold

Maud in Gold © Simon Goss MA 2022

One of my better attempts at a recognizable likeness of Maud, but it’s a low bar. This landscape oriented drawing is well placed on the page and unusually highly coloured for a painting of a model who is normally quite pale. Here she has a a deep tan which, along with her red hair gave her a surprisingly consistent coloration overall that caused me to struggle to find definition through contrast.

I have therefore resorted to color theory and added in a little Cerulean blue to offset all the orange. This actually has the effect of enhancing the orange through complementary contrast but at least there is a contrast. Apart from the blue, the rest of the painting is a symphony of Scarlet, Quinacridone Gold, Potter’s Pink and Windsor Orange. It would have been better perhaps if Maud had kept her eyes open to at least double the amount of blue in the piece!

5 Maud Galerie du Nord

Maud Galerie du Nord © Simon Goss RCA 2025

This back view of Maud is from the only session that I was lucky enough to draw her in the flesh. In June 2025 I was asked to teach a masterclass at Galerie du Nord in Amsterdam. I always do some demonstrations to show the group how I work and this was one of them from a twenty minute pose. It depicts Maud’s wondrous hourglass shape as she leans slightly forward in her seat. The drawing is quite tight and accurate I think although it might have benefitted from a darker line under her bottom to convey the weight better. The painting is light and airy with a romantic feel to the palette which features Quinacridone Gold, Aureolin Yellow, Permanent Magenta and a little Cerulean Blue on the scoop of the lower back. Her vibrant hair is a little dull sadly as it was largely in shade.

I confess it is inordinately difficult to draw and explain what you are doing at the same time but I hope the class gets something from it as they hear my thought process while I work.

You can read about more models here — https://medium.com/@draftsmann/list/nudes-d91f516b26e3

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