Figures, not faces.

These are figures, not faces: a whole body, a back, a pair of hands. With no likeness to hold up, the weight falls on posture — the set of a hip, the fall of cloth, the tension in an arm — and that leaves far more room than a portrait ever does. Hands are the hardest thing there is to draw and they're half of what's here. A good part of it comes out of classical sculpture, where the volume is already solved in stone and the job is translating marble into grey.