Courtesans, Paris Print

I may depart from tradition in this, but I prefer to draw what I don't know. I have never met a courtesan or visited Paris. I realize admissions like this ruin promising artistic careers, but it's true. If I arrive in Paris eventually I will discover that Parisian courtesans don't look like this at all, but I will probably look like one of the foolish men on the right. I have a lot of fun making men look foolish in drawings but I have a harder time mocking women. Does that make me modern? No comment. I just like drawing people. I especially like drawing them in interesting poses, pompous, alluring, posed self-consciously and unselfconsciously, with arms wrapped up over their heads and hands fiddling with their neckties or scratching their noses. This demonstrates my inadequate grasp of how the human skeleton articulates and how the muscles work, but it does, I think, show how people feel and behave. Inspiration? Probably those very lubricious drawings Ronald Searle did of red light districts in cities like Hamburg which I pored over at an impressionable age. You don't forget pictures like that. And what you cannot forget you are doomed to repeat. Thank you, Mr. Searle.