his models were friends, such as rudolph burckhardt the photographer and the poet edwin denby. somber tonalities, traditional compositions surfaces scraped and sanded until smooth, characterized the artist's work in the 1930s. line defined the images. de kooning made use of his academic skills as a draftsman but even these canvases show as one critic observed "a feeling for paint surfaces and color." by early 1938, de kooning met a young art student, elaine fried. the two were married in 1943. woman: when i first met bill a year after i got out of high school he was working on paintings of men. he began to make drawings of me. then from the drawings he began his series of women paintings. he really began them in the late thirties about 1939. narrator: de kooning later remarked to elaine "before i met you, my paintings were all quiet and serene. then they became turbulent." by 1945, de kooning achieved a rhythmic flow between painting and drawing. color and line merged, leading to the seminal work pink angels. he brought together two seeming opposites: figuration and abstraction