Entry for Mar 21, 2012

This entry is out of sequence, as the images were in a drawer at the TSA for quite a while.

On that Wed. night's drawing class,  I had invited Alexy and Mo,  a couple of students from the school's Sculpture/Installation class to set up an `environment' in the studio. It was based on an earlier installation they had done using natural elements of wood, hay, and other stuff.

They hung frayed rope and branches, spread hay on the floor, and suspended small sculptures in mid-air. J-  was modelling, and was very good at finding poses that interacted with the space.

Usually, when I'm teaching I am reluctant to take time to draw. My focus is more on what the students are doing, and I find it hard to get lost into my drawing in that setting. But at the end of that night people were working fine without me, so I took time out for two 15-minute studies of my own, as the setting was too interesting to leave undrawn.

Both of these are 24 x 36" sheets of Durotone paper. The top one is drawn with 4B Generl's charcoal, while the lower one has willow charcoal for J's figure, and the General's charcoal for the hanging pieces.

The convergence of setting, props and good models can be especially compelling to work from. During the week of May 14 - 18, I am teaching a special workshop called "Bodies in Context". Each day will have a different model set into a tableau that situates them into a symbolic, social or other context, as fodder for your creative exploration. There's still some room left. The poses will be long enough to allow for an extended drawing, a series of shorter studies - or a fast painting.

You can reach the TSA here.

Entry for Dec 5, 2010

It was the week for model mix-ups. On the Sunday I found P-   ,  sitting in his briefs to fill in for someone who didn't turn up. It was that kind of week, and interesting to get to draw P-   , as I have known him  for decades, but only sketched him once or twice before.
Above are some 10-minute studies, done on 20 x 30" cartridge paper, using Prismacolor art stick. P- held the poses well. Their body language was fairly natural, which suited the boxer briefs. In one I tried to shoehorn the pose into a domestic narrative by adding a bed.

Perhaps as a response to the ordinariness of the poses, for the last couple of 15-minute poses he got more loaded in the body language and settings. I found it really striking, and regretted that I had to slip out a few minutes early. 
The stretched-out `corpse pose' was done on the cold cement floor of the studio, and  the resultant starkness and vuknerability made it one of the most dramatic visuals in a long time, for me. It is such a simple, flat pose, and as such tends to get vetoed in favour of poses with more variety in where limbs are placed, and what angles they are at. But unlike many of the images  post here, this one says `human being' more than it says `nice pose', and I find the former ultimately more compelling.

The lower two are also done on 20 x 30" cartridge paper, but I had to add an extra bit for the feet.

2nd entry for May 2, 2010

These are two 20-minute studies below and two 15-minute ones above. By then the sun's effect had worn off and fresh coffee had kicked in.

Context and background - two of the elements largely absent from these studies - are a principal concern in the 5-day figure drawing intensive I will be yeaching at the Toronto School of Art next week, May 17-21st. Entitled "Body Politics", it offers people who want extended poses time - and a setting to explore some ideas through day-long poses with sets and props.
There is still a little space, so if that appeals to you, contact the Toronto School of Art. You can reach their website here.

3rd entry for April 30, 2010

These are 15-minute and 20-minute poses that ended the evening.

Like a lot of people who work wth a model on short poses, there is a focus on describing the figure as a sculptural form in these studies, and background/context are left all but absent.

A workshop I will teach May 17-21st during the day will have people posing on day-long poses with props, etc, specifically to gbive people the time and resources to people to explore those elements of contect and figure/ground relationship.

If you're free and want to take part, contact the Toronto School of Art here - the 5-day intensive is called "Body Politics"

4th entry for April 27, 2010

These are two 10-minute poses below and a 15-minute pose above, which ended a lively day's worth of drawing.

Teaching is an ongoing and significant part of my creative life, and has been for over a decade now. I find it interesting how the teaching can have a point/counterpoint relationship with the work I am executing at a given time.

Anyone who has taken life drawing classes with me knows that I emphasize the importance of considering the whole picture field, and not to just `plunk down’ the image of a person haphazardly. I also have people experiment with different background treatments, because I believe the context a figure is situated into is an important part of the whole picture.

Notably, most of the drawing I am generating these days eschews any background or narrative context. Well – not entirely, because all of these studies posted here are situated in a larger meta-context/narrative: my ongoing experience of growing and developing through the experience of drawing from life on a steady basis.
Also nearly every image posted here has been carefully cropped, with an eye to a balanced relationship between figure and blank space.
(Part of what appeals to me about the aerial/circus sessions in particular is how they situate bodies into a context of athleticism and public performance/spectacle.)


But each of these studies largely skips backgrounds or storytelling. It seems that those excluded elements make their way with greater prominence into some of my teaching.

This is particularly true of a 5-day workshop that I’ll be leading at the Toronto School of Art from May 17th to the 21st. It's called `Body Politics’, and the whole point is to have models working in day-long extended poses, where props and surrounding elements make a each day a different symbolic and narrative context for a figure to be shown in.

If anyone in the Toronto area would like to immerse themselves in 5 solid days of life drawing (or day-long figure painting explorations), there is still space available.
To get more details, you can access the TSA’s website here. It is course number 1057, listed under the `Spring Intensive Courses' there.

Entry for April 6, 2010

(A long-winded post follows, but I want to mention first that anyone looking for figure drawing instruction in the Toronto area take note- the TSA's Spring term starts April 19th, and I'll be teaching intro Life Drawing on Saturday mornings, and advanced Life drawing on Wednesday evenings for more details, check here)

On the Tuesday night it was a bit of a change of pace for me.

As has been discussed a ways back in this blog, I am cognizant that eroticism and sexuality are a component of bodily experience. And life drawing in general strives to keep those elements well in the background. But as part of the broader spectrum of how bodies are represented and understood, they play a part.
I have always felt that one of the good things about life drawing is the project of seeing a broader spectrum of beauty, of bodies and of contexts than those we get from more general media. but I also feel that there is room to generate imagery in art that opens the dimension of erotic representation in honest ways.

The Keyhole sessions are a local Toronto project that aims to be a `racier' alternative to standard life drawing. In their promotional material they suggest that the sexual dimension of the modelling is much more explicit, in contrast to "your Grandma's life drawing session". Nothing `stuffy' about their place, they say. Up til now I had only heard about it second hand.

On a tip from Z- I went to check out the Tuesday session there. D- and M- were the models, and both work in the adult film industry. I was curious to see how people who make a living at presenting themselves in a sexual context would be in a life-drawing situation.

I was anticipating a bit more of a boisterous experience than I actually got - the woman hosting the session was very pleasant, and people there were also anything but the trenchcoat-clad heavy breathing crowd of old men one might associate with it as a venture. An even split of men and women, mostly urban, most on the hip/arty side of the equation. The crowd was genial and chatty before, after, and during breaks.
I had a fond historical connection to the space it was held in, as the Toronto School of Art used to hold its life drawing sessions in the same Great Hall space that the Keyhole people now use. (I actually used to monitor a drawing session in the room, back in the late '80's). It is a beautiful building at Queen and Dovercourt that they are in, and it was fun to be back there.

The session is a bit more of an immersive experience than some- lights are lower than many studios, which makes it harder to see nuances of the drawing (but can be a freeing thing, too). There is a playlist of music for the night - club music and things like Madonna's `Erotica' which give it more of an event feel, a little like sketching at a mildly kinky fashion show. Models typically get kitted out in ornamental rope harnesses,which adds to the fetish-y feel. The models that night also had high heels on. (Drawing the women with heels was triggering memories of my teacher, Robert Markle, who frequently depicted burlesque dancers in heels in his work)

As for the posing, people posing for extended periods are people posing. Some of the poses they did together had a bit more of an S & M feel, but apart from that most of the poses taken weren't too far off the beam of a standard drawing session. What made it seem different to me was the contextualisation of costume & music more than anything else. That and facial expression: I'm not accustomed to models holding an open-mouthed, ecstatic look, which I associate more with adult books & movies.

People drawing behaved in essentially the same way as they do in any drawing session. At the post-feminist TSA we discourage people from describing people in `objectifying terms' - i.e we should be talking about models' work, not their figures. (I'm wondering though that nowadays perhaps we are at a place where complimenting someone's looks is not de facto demeaning or a reductive gesture diminishing their other capacities...it's tricky)
Physical appearance was more a subject of discussion that night. Certainly the women modelling fit the mold of preferred age and body types for our society.

The studies here are mostly in the 10-minute to 25-minute range. I enjoyed the challenge of the distracting environment and the patterns the rope created, and fitting two figures proportionately into a single space. But in the end most of the two-figure studies are images of people going through the motions of looking sexy together. For me, there was far more frisson drawing D- and L- together a few months back at the AGO, where there was a real intimacy present (see entries for November 2nd).
The 25-minute pencil study of D- from Tuesday was the sole one that for me had some emotional charge. She was just sitting, no special outfit, but the fact of her looking in my direction, and her expression were the most intense, made moreso in an environment where regarding someone in a more erotic context was more condoned.

If you're interested, you can see more about the Session here at the Keyhole website. They do a thorough job of documenting their events.