1st entry for August 29, 2013

Life drawing can get habitual - there are dependable sessions with predictable lighting, lots of space and  experienced professional models. One pays in part for a reliable experience with clear parameters (and often for quiet to focus with, if that's your preference/need). Models often pose on some sort of platform, which among other things serves to heighten the distance between observers and observed. But life drawing can be uber-portable too: as soon as one person poses for some others anywhere, it can be a drawing session.
On the Thursday I checked out a drawing group called The Collective, which has a floating drawing session running in various people's homes. That week it was up in a condo on Yonge near Sheppard. There is no fee, but participants share in hosting and bringing food and drink. Models, when they are there, are volunteers, often other drawers. Degree of undress is flexible.
There were ten to a dozen people squeezed in that night. The atmosphere is very casual, and there is a lot of chat. A lot of that chat seemed to be a sharing of people's dissatisfaction with their drawing-in-progress. I understand that self-criticism, but I wonder that it maybe sets up a bit of a defeatist discourse.

Charlotte, a friend of the night's host, was modelling for the first time, and held poses well. These are a couple of 1-minute studies, some 3-minute ones and a couple of 5-minute ones below. I was using the Pentel Brushpen in a 9 x 12" pad of Canson drawing paper. The small space and nice furniture necessitated a small and tidier method of drawing. I found that extra challenging, owing to the closeness; I have a tough time drawing small, and tougher still when a person occupies more of the visual field.
I've piled a bunch of head studies into one frame here, for simplicity's sake. Each study of someone new is like advancing a set of hypotheses, which become more confident with testing and revising.