Mona Lisa’s hands. Pencil, 2015.

This is a drawing of a section of Leonardo’s most famous painting. Mona Lisa is famous for many reasons, from the sitter’s enigmatic expression, to the myriad reproductions and parodies it spawned.

But what fascinates me above all was Leonardo’s signature sfumato style, a technique which produced a hazy effect with soft transitions between colors and tones. Leonardo masterfully used this effect to create a ‘smoky’ quality in his paintings (sfumato comes from fumo, the Italian word for "smoke").

In this drawing, I tried my best to reproduce the sitter’s hands and creased clothing with the hazy, soft effect of sfumato.