Apart from teaching figure drawing, each week I draw at two or more untutored life drawing sessions where a group of professional artists and enthusiasts share the cost of hiring the artist’s model. This coming Friday the 16th September, I will be taking part in a small show with Brisbane Institute of Art Life Drawing group:
Drawing media is coloured pencil on bristol paper toned with diluted chinese drawing ink, about 40 minutes, model: Carmen
I love the dynamic of the model offering their energy through poses, like a dancer improvising on stage. A model who is inspired and knows how to use their body to suggest gesture and more subtle psychological qualities can be completely mesmerising.
Pastel and pastel pencil on smooth paper, 10 minute drawing, model: Cedar
As an artist, it is a relief to be able to simply respond, rather than always leading the poses for compositional purposes. It gives the chance to just think about what I am doing with my drawing - the emphasis, how the medium feels, and simply being focussed on how to simplify the magic of the human form and gesture into intuitively felt marks, to make something alive and 3D on a flat surface out of basic materials.
Pastel and pastel pencil on smooth paper, 5 minute drawings, model: Cedar
If you are practising figure drawing, I really recommend you find a place near you to practise your drawing - this is quite popular in Australia and there are sessions at affordable rates in most of the major cities I’ve visited around the world. (Please note: I don’t have any problem with photography as a reference when used as such, but if you don’t work from life, which is to say in the same room with a living, breathing person as subject, you are missing out on a range of important factors - spatial depth is profoundly more tangible, and you get tuned into the subtle shifts in the body. Even the fact that a model from life will not be perfectly still can help to cultivate the sense of “building a figure with reference to the subject” rather than copying the figure in a more passive way.)
Pastel and pastel pencil on smooth paper, 10 minute drawing, model: Cedar
If you’re looking for guidance in how to approach drawing in a productive way, check out my summary page for my life class here or the chart of drills I made recently summarising the same content (there’s a zoom function at top right, best to view on a computer rather than a phone)
