Manography

This picture is by Tara Juneau, who drew it before my eyes at Xchanges a few days ago. Tara says: "I am mostly self taught and have always been passionate about drawing. About two years ago I became very inspired by realist Tony Ryder after reading his book 'The Artists Complete Guide to Figure Drawing' , and have just recently taken a figure drawing workshop with him in Seattle."
Mostly self-taught: that just shows what passion can teach. Tara is working adjacent to the New Realism school and IMO would enjoy hugely a spell with Daniel Greaves at the atmospheric Florence Academy of Art.
She employed an unusual drawing method for the picture above which she explains as follows: "I used masonite prepared with tinted gesso. I like the surface that the gesso gives, it has a little bit of tooth. It was drawn in 4h and hb graphite (pencil), heightened with white charcoal. I used the harder pencils because they have a higher clay content and give a softer, lighter tone than say a 4 or 6b."
In pondering this realistic mode of drawing, I had several thoughts:

1. Realism, while ostensibly reducing stylisation to a minimum, is actually a strong stylisation of its own; and
2. Hockney's book The Secret Knowledge is proved false by the knowledge of these artists, which is no secret; after all, I saw Tara draw the above picture, using no machinery at all and barely the use of a pencil-tip to take the odd bearing; and
   
3. Monochrome photography is being beaten at its own game.

In the shower, I decided that a new coinage is required: Manography, derived from Latin manus for hand, and Greek graphos for design. Welcome to the world of manography and Tara Juneau.