Padaung "long-neck" girl

[David Draime]

Chris, thank you so much. Yeah, I have to say, walking through these villages was a bit of a "Ripley" experience. I mean, that's why tourists go there - to gawk and photograph a people who deliberately deform themselves. There is a kind of freak show aspect to it all that I was not at all comfortable with. On the way to these villages - one of which we could only get to by boat down the Pai river - we'd see hand painted signs that read "Longneck village, 2 km." with a funky cartoon of a longneck woman. I lived in China for several years and occasionally would see an ancient woman hobbling down the road with impossibly small, bounded feet. That was certainly freaky to see, but you'd never see dozens of them gathered together "on display" as it were, in a "bounded feet village." But of course, as an artist in Thailand I found myself really drawn to these people, just the look of their shiny coils, other decorations, native dress... my inhibitions/revulsion were put on hold. I knew I wanted to draw and paint them.

From everything I've read about them, no one is certain when or why this tradition started, though the explanation you mentioned certainly is one of the stronger theories out there. Different tribes will explain it differently.

[David Draime]

Linda, thanks and I'm glad you like this drawing. Believe me, I'm no expert with conte (you should talk to Marina!). I've dabbled with it here and there in life drawing classes, but this is my first somewhat finished drawing with it. What inspired me to do this one was Susan Lyons' beautiful conte portraits that were on display at last year's PSA conference - I'm guessing you saw them there...they can also be seen on her and Scott's website. She had mentioned that she used Rives BFK paper and loved it. I know this paper well from my printmaking days - and I've got to say, it is a very beautiful surface to draw on with conte.

I used a Cretacolor conte pencil which I sharpened often, and that's it. I didn't want to use a conte stick in conjuction as it would add a whole other quality and/or color. I found that in laying down light tones and going over it with a blending stump gave me some very beautiful passages - these lighter tones just glow on this paper. Going darker is a bit problematic. I'm so used to charcoal which gives...black. The darkest that conte will go is not that dark. And even then I was pretty sure I didn't want to go completely saturated with the conte. I had a feeling I wouldn't like it. So I guess you have to decide what value is going to represent your darkest darks - and then be careful not to go darker anywhere else.

Just my two cents' worth.