Matisse's Toes

This pastel is based on a heap of lines from blind contour drawing from a photo of Matisse, in a wheelchair, happily cutting some of his amazing paper creations in the last years of his life. There are hundreds of scraps of paper on the floor around him, and his feet are bare. His toes feature in the blind contours, and are still somewhat recognizable in the final semi-abstracted piece.

I was happy that some yellow fish got into this one. The pastel composition ended up turned 90 degrees clockwise from when the contour drawings were made.

24 x 18 - Pastel and Sharpie on kraft paper