Drawing

Someone commented on my blog that I was brave to share my life drawings. Not at all. I post them for a few reasons, mainly to show the art that I'm doing at the moment and not just finished pieces. Although my drawings are a resource for my art, sometimes they inspire a painting (Warm Winter for instance), I draw for the sake of drawing. I love it. I think it's something anyone and everyone can and should do. Another reason is so other people can see there are so many ways to attempt a drawing but the main thing is to have a go. In drawing classes there are so many different styles among the participants. Everyone has a preference for a particular media - some like to draw with a pencil and sharpen it frequently - and there are so many different types of pencil to try - graphite, charcoal, chinagraph to mention a few. I particularly like my red chalk pencil. Then charcoal - some people love willow charcoal, I seem to use compressed a lot. I just took a photo of some of the things in the box of materials I take to life drawing class - some semi-hard coloured pastels are useful for a change, nice on black paper. I need to buy some more compressed graphite and charcoal and conte, I struggled this week with those little bits! You can see I've got a really big piece of willow charcoal that's fun to draw with. And white - compressed and in pencil form, are other items I use regularly.

One of the class participants commented to the tutor that she likes the "zone" she gets into when drawing over the two hours. I know what she means. And when I go into the studio it takes me an hour or so to get into that "zone". When I come downstairs at the end of a few hours I feel like my head is in another place and it takes a while before I'm all there! Must be something to do with that left brain/right brain thing...