...Rummaging through drawers and drawings

My first experience of life drawing was when I was 16, at college.  It was a little shocking to see a middle-aged woman of quite ample (if no longer very firm) proportions slip out of her dressing gown and stand there naked and unabashed while the class of teenage art students, all of whom were more embarrassed than she'd ever been, studied every fold and crease and undulating bit of her flesh.  She was very experienced, never moving a muscle, and told us later that while we were looking at her she was actually also looking at us and could see our 'auras'.  Some shone very brightly, she said, but she never told us whose.  She didn't even flinch when one of the tutors, in an attempt to focus our minds on our model as an 'object', placed an upside-down cardboard box over her head.  Maybe it helped to stop our auras from dazzling her while she posed.

I remembered that yesterday while going through a folder of life drawings that are a few years old now, and wondering if anything would inspire me again.  It's been ages since I've done any but, as anyone who's ever tried it knows, it's such good discipline to draw in a class environment with a real model.  Very few of the pieces I looked back through work as a whole; perspectives and proportions are wrong and my lines or textures are dull, but scanning and cropping them to keep the bits I like most seems to give them a slightly different feel and new lease of life.  I hope the models won't mind the amputations and decapitations I've given them here.  At least there are no cardboard boxes on heads, anyway...

 

Naked

I’ve realised I haven’t put any old drawings on here for a while and my strap line does mention that I’m going to be rummaging through a few.  So I’ve had a bit of a poke around and here are a handful of quickly-drawn life studies from a few years ago just in case they tickle your fancy, if your fancy needs any tickling. 

Artwork by C / Sun Dried Sparrows

Life drawing is a strange and wonderful thing.  In my experience there’s never any embarrassment or judgement on the part of artist - or model.  You get real people to study, in all shapes and sizes, of varied ages and backgrounds, and it’s a great leveller.  Really, we’re all the same in our diversity once we take our clothes off...

A certain serenity descends upon the room as you get totally immersed in your drawing, and you think about light and shade, texture and perspective -  and does that arm look right, oh and how will I tackle that difficult foreshortening…?   I love to draw sinewy limbs and pubic hair!  Protruding collar bones or curvaceous hips! You explore all those undulations and angles and crevices in great detail with your eyes and your pencil, focusing totally and solely on the naked body in front of you, so that your model becomes absolutely an object - and yet is in no way ever demeaned.

I must do some more some day.