Day 2: Exploration of Styles

A quick note on the models. Day 1 we had a female model. She was lanky and skinny. You could see the ripples of her rib cage and the tiny bumps of her spine. I suspected that she, herself, was an artist, because she was very well aware of her poses. Exaggerated and angled, it seemed that every limb and every curve of her body lined up with other parts of her body perfectly. It was almost as if she was doing it on purpose to produce perfect 90 degree, 45 degree, 30 degree angles.

On Day 2 we had a male model. He, too, was lanky and thin. You could see his tiny muscles weaving in and out of his body. He bothered me a little as a model, not because he's a man, but because he stopped to talk to us. He gave small suggestions as though he too was teaching. This was strange to me, because during the first day, I had gotten used to the model, being up there as nothing but an object. With so much attention to the body, you start to forget that it is a person up there. He also moved and sighed when the poses lasted a little too long--it was as if he was fighting against this objectification.


On day 2 I loosened up. I approached the exercises with full force, without fear. I knew at this point that there was no point in attempting "good" art. These wereull force and simply exercises, and here was my opportunity to explore. After the gesture drawings, which we do at the beginning of every class, our teacher Shane asked us to now use the pointed side of our charcoal. We were to look at the lines of the body--not just the contours, but every line weaving in and out of the body.

In the drawing above, and the one shown here, we had to draw without looking at our paper and just looking at the model. We also could not take our charcoal off the paper. The idea was really to look at the model, pay more attention to our subject than what's on our paper and just let our hands respond to what our eyes see.

After this, we were allowed to look at our paper again and draw the next pose. Still, we used the pointy end, with a focus on lines.






I'm kind of proud of these two pictures. They're not great or anything, but they're extremely different from the way I am used to drawing. It was like something went over me, and I just went nuts on the lines, inside and out, curving and criss-crossing every which way.

What's more exciting is that I saw my images evolving within a matter of 2 days. And the styles start to kind of resemble those I've seen in art books and museums.


A word on the penis: Surprisingly I was a little shy and avoided drawing the penis at first. I didn't want to be staring at it for so long! Then it clearly became unavoidable, and it became just another set of lines, another object.





On to contour drawing. Next we were asked to combine gesture drawing with line drawing, but this time, paying more attention to the contours of the body. The one of the man sitting up was easier than the laying down pose. I enjoyed drawing the back. I found the laying down pose difficult and awkward.




















Drawing is like yoga. It is an act of meditation. You act with intention, yet you free your mind of everything. You let go. Your eyes crawl along the body, and your arm responds. Your only focus is the shape, the angles, the length and width of that person before you. And sometimes you go into the unknown. It's intimidating; it's scary; it could utterly shatter your self-confidence. The unknown is drawing the fingers, the toes, the awkward curves of the body that you are not used to. These three hours every Monday and Wednesday are the best hours I've spent in a very long time.