On the Friday night before a very therapeutic trip to Montreal for the weekend with my sweetie, I went over to Round Venue for some drawing time. Round has become host for a few ongoing drawing events, and once in a while they mount a `mash-up' of all of them: Dr Sketchy's meets Toons on Tap meets Reverie.
The mash-up night is arguably one of the more radical departures from the standard life-drawing session paradigm. There were three simultaneous sets of models, aerialists, burlesquers and alt-models each posing in different areas. Swivelling in one's chosen seat led to different people to draw all the time. There was no emcee, and pose lengths seemed about 5 minutes to 10 (except for the Reverie aerialists, who usually seem mostly to be on the move,) but no one was providing info. It was an immersive environment, and you just drew.
The immersive format had its pros an cons. One of my personal beefs with the resurrected Sketchy's is slightly overlong pauses and emcees that interrupt the flow of drawing, but that's a minor thing. That and the emcees' tendency to contextualise the evening with `saucy' burlesque patter, which always feels like it is aimed at my inner 12-year-old. At the Friday event that wasn't happening, and I could get more into my own personal headspace.
Severin Stargher was one of the alt models that night, and these are some however-long-they-were studies with pencil, Pitt pens and Pentel Brushpen on 12 x 18" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper, except for the bottom one, which is on a 17 x 17" sheet of the same paper. I was liking the all-black formal wear, but with ink it does introduce a challenge, just how much shade to use. I stayed on the linear side, though the brushpen, while less cooperative on fine details, strikes something of a balance.
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