Two Life Drawings

conte crayon

Tuesday morning is Life Drawing morning, and I’m pleased enough with a couple of yesterday’s efforts to put them up.

Our model yesterday was great to draw, and gave us really interesting poses. Even better, she was able to keep them, especially the difficult ones.

The kneeling pose was on for half an hour, and it’s about mass and weight (as I suppose most figure drawing should be). I quite like the difference between working the load-bearing parts and slung belly, and the economical lines of her resting feet.

The standing figure was a warm-up pose. The model struck up this dancer’s position, with her arms out, and kept them like that for the full ten minutes. It was a quick drawing and I kept the chalk moving quite quickly and lightly, not erasing, but correcting with a second or third line. This, with the delicacy of the pose, has produced a very ethereal, animate drawing.

I am so glad that I was told about these sessions (WASPS at Patriothall 9.30am-12.00, £5). They start off with quick five or ten minute warm-up poses, followed by maybe a couple of longer ones. After a break for a cuppa and biscuits, there’s either two half-hour or one hour-long pose. It’s a community, not an educational, project, run by members, and the space is let from WASPS.

The awful thing about not drawing seriously for 15-20 (going on 30) years is that you just… go… off. It’s not so much the mechanical manipulation of the medium that dulls, it’s the mental skill of looking and examining. Prior to starting at WASPS last autumn, the last time I had drawn a model in a studio was in 1977, and I was appalled to find that I really didn’t know where or how to start. My first new drawings really weren’t very good, and were more about bluff and aesthetic effect than gathering and conveying information. Hopefully, the more I exercise my ‘Looking Muscle’ the more effective I’ll be, and once I’ve achieved fitness I must never, ever let that drop again.

…but it is very, very difficult.