Life drawing - male model standing 5-minute pose © Janet E Davis 2011
This was the first session of six, the seventh life drawing session that I have attended this year.
It was a small group, possibly because there was a thunderstorm during the time when some might have been travelling to the studios. Of course, the advantage of a small group was that we had space to move to a different space in the room to get a different view of the model. I stayed in more or less the same position in order to have more challenge in the drawing.
I am approaching these sessions with the intention of focusing on the process of looking at the human figure through drawing. It is not about having a highly finished image at the end of a session. As much as possible, I leave the evidence of the marks of my looking, unless they cause me too much confusion as I work through or round them.
I try to record the amount of time that a drawing took because it is one of the important dimensions of the work. My marks are part of the recording of the time. Drawings are not the result of a nanosecond of looking. Drawings come from spending some time looking. I am interested in what I can record within a set amount of time. Years ago, I think that I would have spent so much time worrying about whether one point was in the right place in relation to another point that few marks would have appeared on paper. I am trying to achieve a shortening of time and fluidity of resultant movement between:
-
Life drawing male model reclining © Janet E Davis 2011
seeing the model;
- processing the information about what I see;
- trying to analyse that information;
- deciding on how I synthesise the three-dimensional information into two dimensions;
- sending appropriate messages to the muscles in my hands and arms to move;
- making marks on the paper;
- looking at those marks to check them;
- looking back up at the model to compare with the original;
- taking in more visual information about the model and combining it with the information about the marks on the paper;
- deciding which element to focus on next;
and so on.
Life drawing male model standing 25-minute pose © Janet E Davis 2011
Whilst all this is going on, I am thinking about other things to some extent (see my previous life drawing post for more about how I think). During this session, I kept wondering if I could or should listen to music on the iPod, or whether the slight sound might be audible to the others and really irritate them. I also thought that there might be a danger that I would start singing along to the music as I do at home.
Music is very much a part of the creative process for me. Listening to music helps me to get into a visual way of thinking and analysing the world. For years, I have created mixtapes, then CD compilations, now playlists of ‘painting music.’ If anybody is interested, I might share some with you some time. Sounds have shapes and textures in my mind, not always very consciously, but I could describe them most of the time if asked.
Again, the last drawing proved the most difficult of the evening. I was tired, and some of the extreme foreshortening made the pose a challenging one to capture. I thought that I had failed totally. Looking at the drawings in the photographs, however, I think that although I could have done more if there had been time, it was not as bad as it seemed at the time. You can see all the drawings from ‘Week 7′ on a separate page.
Life drawing male model seated on ground © Janet E Davis 2011
Further reading and more images
Links to pages of life drawings
More of my posts about life drawing
Life drawings 2011 [week 1] post
Life drawings 2011 week 4 post
Life drawings 2011 week 5 post
Tags: drawing, life model
