Life drawing - female model seated on a stool, 15-minute pose. © Janet E Davis 2011
This was the second session of six, the eighth life drawing session that I have attended this year.
It was a slightly larger group than last week, but still small enough to have space to move around for a better position from which to draw a pose. I stayed in more or less the same position throughout the session.
It was very blustery that evening. The wind was rattling things in the building. Not everything was in its usual place in the studio. The big plinth had been moved out for the Late Shows during the weekend. Bits of the building rattling and the sound of the heaters switching on and off disturbed my concentration. I kept thinking about putting earphones in and listening to my iPod but I thought that it might be just loud enough to be heard by the others if the wind died down and the heaters were off simultaneously. I also might forget myself and start humming or even singing along. I have done that on a bus once or twice.
I find it interesting to see how we negotiate with each other. The dynamic of the group was a little different to last week’s. The others wanted longer poses, so we had 3 minutes for the shortest, 15 rather than 10 minutes; and then just one 50-minute pose instead of two 20 to 25-minute poses during the second hour. The model found her leg had gone to sleep after about 40 minutes, so she needed to move about for a few minutes. She had tried to find a position that would be comfortable to maintain for nearly an hour. There are many poses, however, that seem perfectly easy initially but prove to strain muscles or cut off circulation.
Life drawing - female model seated on a table, 15-minute pose. © Janet E Davis 2011
I was not very happy with what I produced during the session. At first, I thought that all the drawings were totally hopeless, embarrassingly dreadful. I did try to put that thought aside and just get on with the next drawing. The last and longest drawing of the evening should have got further than it did. By halfway through, my neck and shoulder muscles were warning of strain from holding the drawing board. I was more cautious than I should have been in making marks. The thought that I had made a mess of the drawings during the first half, and that it was the long pose, inhibited me until the last ten minutes.
When I viewed the photographs of the drawings, none of them looked quite as bad as I had seen them just after I had finished them. Years ago, an artist recommended looking at work in a mirror (and maybe upside down) in order to get the distance to assess it. These days, I find that taking photographs of it and putting it online creates the distance. It acts in a similar way as a mirror, changing the scale.
So, week 8′s life drawing session reminded me that to solve a problem it is good to:
- get some emotional and mental distance;
- look at it from a different angle;
- change its scale;
- let or ask other people to look at it and to offer their thoughts on it.
It also indicated to me that maybe I still aim to produce more than is normal within a short timespan.
If you want to see all the drawings from week 8 (there are 2 or 3 more of the quick drawings to add), I have put them together on a page.
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
