A few years ago, I took a class to draw the clothed figure. Our model Maja wore a long white gown and a red shawl and reminded us all of John Singer Sargent’s studies for and painting of “El Jaleo.”

This is one of several drawings of Maja from that modeling session. It’s about 4×12 inches and rather lightly penciled on white paper so it doesn’t reproduce all that well.

For this post, I’d looked for Sargent’s oil study of a flamenco dancer I had seen at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. But then I came upon “The Spanish Gypsy Dancer.” Oh my. Sargent’s painting, even this tiny copy from the Internet, quite takes my breath away.

So what do you do with a drawing you rather like? Leave it hidden away in the sketchpad? Or…?

Almost right away, I knew I wanted to create an etching and call it “The Rose Shawl.” This is ink lift and aquatint on a copper plate approximately 2.5×5 inches. After applying the black ink, I rubbed in a bit of red for both the shawl and skin tone, then printed on white Murillo.

Three or four years after the original modeling session, as I gaze with astonishment at Sargent’s art, maybe I’ll be inspired to take my drawings of Maja into paintings.