Artist Research - Leonardo Da Vinci - His Technical Drawings

Below are two of my favourite examples of Leonardo da Vinci's technical drawings. The left image is a detailed images of a woman's  head while the second is a study of her hands and their positioning:

  [Woman’s Head (1470-76)]                                                      [Study of Arms and Hands. c. 1474]

The drawing of the woman's head is my favourite due to the simplity of image and how it was created. The woman's head is bowed forward in the image which could say that she could either be in thought or she could be in prayer. The mouth or eyes express no emotion as they are both closed but you can still tell she is a gentle woman from her positioning, face and over atmosphere of the image. The pen da Vinci used shows her hair to be soft and wavy and frames her face as she looks down, adding to the feeling that woman is a woman of a gentle nature. The light that he has draw with adds light to her face showing it to be smooth and calm creating the atmosphere. 

The second image is very different from the first. Although it is showing again the human body, this time the darker pen makes the shadows created by the hands and arms to be more pronounced and jump out. But they also make the light contrast better showing the different colourings and shadows that it makes as it hits the hands and arms in different places. The arms are place one against the stomach while the second higher placed by her heart. Usually the placement of hands this way shows sorrow or worry as if she is waiting for someone to return. It may show pain however meaning someone could have emotionally hurt her and she is holding herself like she is feeling her broken-heart. However because the image has no face we cannot determine if either of these are true. We can say however that either way the hands are placed like so because of an emotional pain - her own or another's.