The earliest drawings in the timeline, those that remain as pencil sketches unaltered by watercolor or cutout subtraction, are the most detailed and therefore the most erotic. Thus, let us begin with one of these. Temple of Love depicts two women engaged in cunningulus – female oral sex. 
This drawing, while not done purely in pencil, is modified with a watercolor wash so pale and slight as to be nearly nonexistent – suggesting, then, that this sketch was executed and reworked during the early stages of Rodin’s “drawing years,�? before he had developed his characteristic method of drastically altering sketches with paint. In addition, the crisp style of the drawing does not fit with the majority of Rodin’s drawings on the same subject – the two women’s bodies are relatively clearly defined. We can see the expression on the face of the woman lying down, count five fingers on her left hand, and discern the spine of the kneeling woman. The lines have been enhanced in some areas by smudging to create the illusion of depth, clarifying the recesses in the body of stomach, neck, and groin. It is this sort of detail and explicit rendering which imbues the drawing with such intense eroticism – for this is surely one of Rodin’s more overtly erotic sketches. It is presumably drawings such as this one that Bonnet refers to when she writes, “In the delicacy of the graphic depiction and the sensual, sexual charge contained in the colored overworking, the drawings demonstrate the way in which aesthetic pleasure can become sensual and also erotic�? (Bonnet 20). Here Bonnet suggests that Rodin’s eroticism in drawings like Temple of Love stems from his “graphic depiction�? – essentially, his use of contour line. In this case, the delicacy and tenderness of the lines with which Rodin treats these figures defines sensuality at its very core. If indeed this sketch is representative of Rodin’s earliest drawings, we can see immediately how, at the beginning, Rodin crafted his lesbian couples with lines of considerable detail, thus channeling the explicit eroticism art historians claim to be present in all of Rodin’s drawings from this period. What remains to be seen, for us, is whether this eroticism really does last throughout the drawings, or whether, as we’ve proposed, Rodin’s focus shifted from sex to art as time went on.
According to the chronology, this explicit eroticism wanes with time. We witness such a waning in Sapphic Couple, in which, compared to Temple of Love, both the contour line is slightly cleaner and the erotic mood slightly less. The two women here are still, however, relatively explicitly defined, with such details discernable as nipples, a collarbone, closed eyelids, and pubic hair. The contour line clearly separates the two bodies, but it recalls the single fluid line of Rodin’s later drawings more readily than the more precise, detailed lines of the previous ones. In this sketch, again treated almost imperceptibly with watercolor, these women recall the figures Bonnet writes of “stretching themselves in the most unusual postures, who seem to be concentrating entirely on showing off their sexuality�? (Bonnet 19). The apparent spectacle Bonnet refers to is evident here. One woman straddles the pubic region of the other, who stretches her arms above her head and folds her legs in an ironic expression of modesty. Neither is looking at the viewer, as they seem to be completely engrossed in the each other and the sexual situation they have found themselves in. Indeed, the two women’s almost pointed disregard for the viewer suggest their awareness of the fact that they are being watched, and their enjoyment in being such a spectacle. The blatant eroticism they seem to be flaunting only strengthens the claim that Rodin’s earliest drawings exhibit an almost pornographic sensuality and erotic flavor. This claim is the one that historians of Rodin’s drawings have repeatedly made. Their mistake comes in their failure to differentiate between drawings that are clearly dissimilar, both in style and in period of completion. As we examine these following, quite possibly later examples of Rodin’s lesbian sketches, we will see quite unmistakably how the eroticism diminishes as the precision of the lines fade and the shapes become more and more nebulous.