3rd Entry for June 27, 2010

Once again after our break I tried doing a set of 1-minute gesture sketches to fit random intervals I had already set down on the page, as a drawing challenge. Following that below are two 15-minute poses.
While three of us were drawing those, Mark was getting more worried as he got updates on people surrounded at the corner of Queen and Spadina being held in the rain - a fairly heavy rain that had diminshed the number of whistles we were hearing from outside.

In spite of the genuinely troubling events, Z- was working hard to keep the mood productive & focused where we were, doing some good poses, and trying not to stoke the fires of anxiety.

The lowest study was a half-hour one that wrapped up the evening. I had located some lost-and-found umbrellas, and the remaining drawers and Z- headed due west to Bathurst without pause, feeling safer as we left the hot spot behind. We wished each other well when Z and I reached my studio, and Mark and one other drawer headed off. Transit was running again, which was good.
It was definitely a time unlike most I've ever experienced, when just walking downtown felt like it could possibly land you in jail or see you held for hours. Not a good feeling.

...That time has now passed, and things are calmer. No threats on July 26-28th, but there is a once-a-year opportunity to spend 3 days focusing in on the sculptural aspects of drawing bodies in space, at a workshop I am teaching at the TSA called "Structural Bodies".

From 9 a.m to 4 p.m on each of those days, medium to long poses will supply the opportunity to analyse the figure as volumes in space, and to interpret that using blocks, tubes, ovoids and such, and through cross-contour marks/cross-sections. The thinking that goes into that is a component of drawing foreshortened poses like the reclining ones of Z- here.

For other examples of the kind of studies we'll be doing, click on the tag below for "structural drawing:. To contact the TSA to register, you can get details and contact info here.

2nd Entry for June 27, 2010

The lowest image is 5 minutes; the other four were 10-minute pose. Z- was doing really good work. From my end my focus was a little distracted by the actions outside, and wondering if at some point some police person would turn up at the studio door, checking to see who we were & what we were up to.
Mark was getting phone reports from his partner about the situation unfolding at Queen and Spadina, where over a hundred people had been corralled by police. All the while the whistles/helicopters continued outside.

1st entry for June 27, 2010

The Sunday night of the 27th was an extraordinary drawing session.

The Talking Heads have a song titled "Life During Wartime", and the evening was reminiscent of that.

In Toronto, it was the weekend of the G20 summit. Because of that, the majority of TSA's drawing sessions were cancelled for the weekend. Mark, who organises the Sunday night drawing session reckoned that by 6 pm on Sunday the action would have passed, and decided to take the chance. He arranged for Z- to work, as he wanted an `unflappable' model, just in case.

Come Sunday evening, the downtown was still under very heavy police presence, and the intersection of Queen and Spadina had ended up as a touchstone spot for police/protest tension - only 2 blocks away from TSA. I accompanied Z- there, and walking along Richmond towards the school we realised our wardrobe choices - our usual black ensembles - might have been a tactical error when a group of guys on a patio shouted a joke about 'Black Bloc' towards us.

As it was, we shifted away from Richmond when we saw a mass of over a dozen uniformed police heading west on a path intersecting ours, as there had been reports of arrests and searches of random people throughout the day, if the police thought they looked dodgy.

Arriving to the school, the only soul was Mark, and we pondered cancelling, but a couple of other equally brave/foolhardy people found their way down, so we decided to go on with the drawing.

These were some 1-minute poses that Z- took. Imagine a big studio, with four instead of the usual 15 - 20 drawers, and a sonic backdrop of intermittent whistles and continuous helicopter sounds. It seemed a little unreal.