Drawing has never been a strong suit of mine; at school I opted for Pottery rather than drawing or painting. I’ve ever quite got the hang of translating what my eye sees, and my brain wants to convey, onto paper.
Last week I met a girl at a Flashmob, Helen, who was doing 30 things for her 30th, and completing a Life Drawing class was one of her goals. When her friend dropped out at the last minute, I jumped at the chance to try something new and expand my artistic horizons!
We turned up at a funky pub in Balham where they run Life Drawing classes each month. Dan, the chap who ran the sessions, is an accomplished artist with bags of enthusiasm and a great sense of fun. We were greeted by a table of different materials – felt tips, charcoal, crayons, chalk etc; I was like a kid in a sweet shop when I grabbed a handful of everything “just in case”!
I didn’t have any expectations but was still surprised and slightly relieved at the format. Rather than lots of arty types staring seriously at a model for hours, it was a light, fun atmosphere with many of the other attendees swigging their wine and excitedly wielding their materials ready to start.
We began with a 7 minute pose, where the beautiful model arranged herself aesthetically and we all attempted to draw what we saw. Dan explained that they usually alternate between male and female models and they play with different styles and concepts – next time they will have a dancer to explore movement, other times light and shadow, other times look at cubist art etc.
Dan then tried to get us to throw away our previous learned behaviours. We did another pose, 5 minutes this time, trying different materials. I used a really light pastel which you can’t really see in the photo so I’ve not posted them. We then had another pose where we were challenged to use our non-dominant hand! That was a bit harder but I had a good go at it!
Next we were challenged to focus on what we saw – so we had 3 minutes to draw without looking at the paper at all. I was pleasantly surprised that my picture came out looking even vaguely like a person! Then we experimented with trying to express the stress and strain of an uncomfortable looking pose.
Next we had a quick-fire session where we had 3 poses, a minute each, and we had to draw each on top of the other in one continuous line (without lifting the pencil from the paper). We then worked on how to accept mistakes and refine, by drawing and correcting over the top. I chose to do each layer of correction in a different colour so I could see how the picture evolved.
We also looked at how to simplify images, so tried drawing using only geometric shapes; and finally tried experimenting with light and shadow.
We then did something completely different – with a blank sheet of paper and no materials, we were challenged to create something that represented the next pose. I was pretty proud of my little paper lady!
Phew! After all that, and a short break, we finished the evening by playing with different media (this month was Collage!) so I had great fun cutting, ripping and sticking. Funnily enough I was looking at everyone else’s efforts and admiring their results whilst being disappointed in my own, only to have a couple of people look at mine and say “oh that’s really good, wish I could do that!” so I guess we are truly our own worst critics!
I already had 40 things on my list but one of them is proving to be difficult to arrange (who knew stalking a celeb would be so hard?!) so I am pleased to add this achievement to the list as a late addition, and hopefully keep my total achievements at the magic number of 40.
If you want to give this a go, I would strongly recommend it. I’ll probably even go with you!
Contact details below.
The Exhibit: http://theexhibit.co.uk/life-drawing/
Dan: http://www.danwhiteson.com/life-drawing/
40 things... 