This is one of my earliest spherical drawings, from 1995, my last year living in New York. It was drawn (in rapidograph on a styrofoam ball coated with papier-mâché) at Spring Street Studios, a life model drawing space in Soho.
This was one of first of my spheres to include human figures, and in drawing it I was surprised to see how little area they take up, particularly the nude model who is the focus of everyone’s attention (and the subject of the relatively large drawings the other artists are working on)- that’s her in the middle, in front of the dark sheet hanging on the wall. I myself am nowhere to be seen- in this kind of drawing the artist himself must be reduced to a kind of disembodied all-seeing eye, or the image will be more than half eye socket. I did include the chair I was sitting on.
My friend Tom Lechner was kind enough to convert the original drawing into a panoramic image which can be viewed immersively here (Shockwave required).
l was able to make extensive use of this scene in my upcoming book Extreme Perspective! I first drew a cleaned-up and tighter version of Tom’s panoramic conversion, then manipulated that drawing in various ways in Photoshop and Lightwave to create new versions which demonstrate points in my chapter on wide-angle perspective.