Small Victories

For the past couple of years, I've been attending a Life Drawing meet-up every Thursday morning; it's one of the highlights of my week. Over the weekend I was sorting through the drawings I've kept and it was a bit humbling. Some weeks have produced more than one "keeper", while others had none. I'm not sure I'm even getting better—my Parkinson's may be starting to affect the looser strokes that I've been trying to attain. I also saw that the hands and feet in my earlier drawings are better than the more recent ones.  Of course, heads, hands and feet are notoriously hard to draw; many art schools have entire courses devoted to them. And there's no "faking it" as you can sometimes do with other subjects: unless they're really accurate, they stand out like, well, like a sore thumb.

Most of the time, part of a drawing works while other parts don't. So, rather than dwelling on the parts of this drawing that hadn't been completely successful, I decided to scan it and crop it to highlight this area—I think it stands alone as a nice little intimate portrait. Small victories.

Quiet

 •  from today's life drawing meet-up  •

graphite and charcoal on drawing paper

Life drawing Meet-up: Week 2

Charcoal on newsprint, 15 minute pose

At Week 2 of my Life-drawing Meet-up, there was some discussion among the "regulars" of a book called, The Undressed Art: Why We Draw by Peter Steinhart. It sounds fascinating to me, especially after I came home and read this 2004 NY Times review. I reserved the book at the library and will keep you posted as I read it. 

What does compel us to draw, especially in today's digital world?

For me, it just feels like pure creativity, whether or not the end product is ever seen by another set of eyes. Drawing is, at the very least, wonderfully distracting and escapist, and there are days when it feels downright healing. 

Drawing is usually a solo, intimate activity, so it's interesting to me when a group draws together. In this group, we chat during breaks, but once the pose starts, all you hear is the scraping of charcoal and pencils on paper (what a great sound!) and the background music. Some people retreat to their earphones and iPods, others—like me—just stay unplugged, but we're all completely engrossed in drawing.

Our model was, once again, very good. I love that she wasn't the body type that is heralded in the media as being ideal; she had ample hips (much more fun to draw than thin ones, frankly) with a smaller torso. One of the other artists mentioned that she was reminiscent of someone in a work by Ingres (one of my favorite artists) which was so true! My proportions are a bit off, but here is the long pose for the day. Unlike last week, I bravely attempted drawing the model's face this time ...well, kinda sorta:

Charcoal and graphite on newsprint, 60 minute pose

So, tell me, why do you draw?

Life drawing Meet-up: Week 1

As I mentioned in my last post; I've just started attending a weekly life-drawing group that I found through Meetup.com. It's been years since I've done any figure drawing, but back in college, I did quite a lot of it—and loved it. I was so excited to buy a big, fat pad of newsprint and get out my various charcoals, conte crayons and such.

Here's what I took:

And here's what I actually ended up using:

We had a wonderful model; her 1-minute warm-up poses were very dancer-like. When she took breaks during the hour-long pose, she marked her placement with little bits of tape, and was amazingly good at re-positioning herself. The pose at the top of this post was a 15-minute pose, and is my favorite of the day. (Drawings on 18 x 24 newsprint are a little bit challenging to photograph, but you get the idea...)

The 60+ minute pose (below) is a little overworked in places, and the chest area looks a bit too boyish, but I do like how the leg area turned out. Oh, and can you tell that my weakness is drawing faces? (Maybe I should be taking a portraiture class.) I feel that when I draw a so-so face on an otherwise acceptable drawing, the so-so face is all you notice. So I left this one blank (and, of course, it's all you notice!). Next week I'll practice shading in at least the basic planes of the facial structure.

My main goal for this first session (besides having fun) was to try and at least get the body proportions right, and I felt pretty good about achieving that, for the most part—and I definitely had fun. The ten 1-minute warm-up drawings (below) are such a great way to start; they really do help to sweep away those brain cobwebs and get focused.

The one thing I miss from a class with instruction is having a group critique. And you don't really get to see others' work unless you walk by during  break, etc. But those are very minor complaints. The "regulars" were very welcoming to the two of us that were newbies. There were six of us drawing, and  the cozy studio had lots of natural light—is there a better way to spend an autumn morning?