Life Drawing #9, Pastel, A2

Life drawing #9

It’s funny, sometimes you do a session and then you just thrust the drawings away in disgust and don’t look at them for ages.  Also the Saturday noontime before this session I had an altercation (well assault, a chavvy bully teenage girl hit me from behind on a bus) and of course, the bus ride into town to do this session the only seats were at the top of the bus, at the back in front of some noisy kids, almost a replication of the Saturday event.

So I arrived in a rather hypersensitive adrenaline-filled state, and then someone moaned at me where I was setting up next to them and demanded I move. Which felt like the last straw, I almost walked out.

All those of things combined to feeling unhappy and burnt out, so much so I actually didn’t go to life drawing last week. I was thinking of abandoning it…

Life Drawing #9, Graphite/Pencil, A2
Life Drawing #9, Graphite/Pencil, A2

I wasn’t happy with the session at all, but looking back at the work I really progressed. Love the abstract pencil drawing above, and of course the mad pastel at the top of the page was caused by the anger of the session not being as good as I’d hoped. Which then ironically becomes one of my favourite drawings.

And the charcoal where she looks like she’s doing the rhumba? That’s another ‘lie on the floor and have a rest’ model pose, but it looks way better the wrong way round! Again, like the energetic lines and abstract shapes – sometimes drawing is less about what’s in front of you, rather your reaction to it. I can get more hung up and angry about replicating reality rather than focusing on whether what I’m doing excites me sometimes.

And also another lesson I’ve learned is that I need to be interested by the subject, which is a problem with the randomness of this life model class. I did a drawing of John a day after which I’ll post here, but after feeling rather deflated about it all, it showed me I can actually draw. I just can’t always easily draw random people who I have no connection with, especially when I’m not well physically (as previously with the cold) or mentally.

Life Drawing #9, Pastel, A2
Life Drawing #9, Pastel, A2

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