Since mid-November 2021, I’ve been going to life drawing sessions. Over the year prior, I’d been drawing and painting from a flat image on a screen and was becoming frustrated about how much of getting a likeness was down to measuring. Shifting an eye one millimetre to the left or right would make a difference to whether the drawing or painting bore a similarity to the image on the screen. But I found creating literal reproductions of an image in this way missed something vital.
I remember my first life drawing session, and it was strange when I was trying to measure the model against my pencil, but the model was breathing! Her ribcage moving up and down significantly as I was measuring, her arms shifting slightly over the course of the 5/10/20/30-minute poses. But gradually you begin to work in a way that sees the model not as an instant in time, but more of an overarching presence, and I've been really grateful to get feedback and guidance from artist Guy Portelli to help me improve quickly. This week, as usual now, I have a life drawing session and the model is an ex-wrestler who has posed for our group of artists before. I'm particularly looking forward to it because I was was really happy with my pictures last time. Fingers crossed the new ones will measure up... Comments are closed.
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