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...

Waihi Arts - Life Drawing Classes

We're lucky to have life drawing classes once again up and running, commencing March 12, with John Mulvay. The class ran for two terms last year with community education funding. Classes are held in Waihi and the local college can provide details to anyone interested in joining.

Anyone who reads this blog will know I appreciate the opportunity of being able to draw from life (see quote on my page here). There's something about having a class to attend each week that keeps me up with my drawing. Keeping notebooks and visual journals all over the place helps as well - in the car, in my bag, in the sitting room, by the computer... but those drawings are usually fairly quick compared to a couple of hours concentrated drawing with a model every week.

Drawing the human form teaches so much about proportion, volume and structure in an expressive subject that has been an enduring theme throughout the history of art.

By the end of a couple of terms I was starting to really use my drawings as a resource in paintings and beginning to work up some of the drawings I brought home from class. I'd like to continue to do that, creating more finished works from the drawings. The gesture drawings would have to be my favourite though, those very short (one minute) poses that can really capture so much.

I have several of my drawings on my flickr page that links from the slideshow at the top right corner of this blog. The photos above are drawings as they were from the class and later after working on them further. The drawing of two models was done originally in red compressed charcoal and later worked on with indian ink, white charcoal and compressed charcoal. The other drawing was originally in black and white compressed charcoal, and I worked further with both media and some red charcoal. Both are on brown paper.