2nd entry for Oct 29, 2015

These are a couple of 10-minute studies above, a 15-minute and a 25-minute one below. These are all Koh-I-Noor Negro oil-based pencil on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Drawing paper.
The space was crowded, which I find challenging, but the poses, and Addi and Jacki's comfort with each other, balanced that out.

7th Entry for Aug 8, 2011

People drawing and posing were still energized, so the session ran overtime, which I was game for. The ecorche head study of K was 10 or 15 minutes. The pose with G-  and J-  , where J-  wore K-'s face cast was 10 minutes, as was the L -   and J-  double pose.
K-s sitting pose finished the evening, and ran for 10 minutes or so. It was disconcerting, as K-  was wearing a latex cast of her own face, with make-up on it. It fit perfectly, but had a synthetic "uncanny valley" effect set against her bright red ecorche body makeup.
When she she wrapped up that, the session ended by general acclaim.

As drawing sessions go, this one struck a few chords for me. Anatomy and droopy peeled facial `skins' are subjects I've explored in drawings of my own in the past. Plus horror/fantasy themes are an area I enjoy, so I was having a particularly good time that night.

You can see some  photographic documentation of this session here.

3rd Entry for Oct 15, 2010

These 15-minute poses finished my evening. I feel they have a better-than-average focus, and attribute that in part to having experimented/challenged myself earlier on in the session.

I have been tending to stay in my comfort zone when drawing, and have been working on smaller, incremental improvement.  `R & D' - Research and Development - is a vital part of the art process, and one that I have a bit more time now to allot to, having scaled back my work commitments and lifestyle a year and a half ago.

I was thinking a couple of days ago while walking home that there is another kind of `R & D' - Repetition and Deepening. By revisiting the same territory with an engaged mind, one can try to go just a % or two deeper than previously.  And the further one has gone beyond the basics, the steeper the curve to making further gains, and the more time it demands.  But then again, what I am calling `repetition and deepening' could be considered part of the `development' aspect of R & D: you regularly try new things, then you try to develop them. But old things can often be taken further, too.

Over the last few years, that deepening process has been a major focus. A good chunk of the work pursuing that is being posted on this blog  and before that on its Yahoo 360 predecessor.
Time will tell, but it seems that the next while will see a bit more investigation on the `new research' aspect of the equation - trying different media and supports, messing around with imagery, as well as a portion of time given over to just maintaining  my grounding in `straight-ahead' life drawing.

Partly, this derives out of a practical consideration: I feel like my drawing of people is as strong or stronger than ever, but the drawings of maximum sensitivity are being done on sheets of newsprint with Conte crayon. Which is a near-perfect marriage of paper and drawing material, but has next to zero archival value, and consequently a problematic, near non-existant commercial value. Any other choice of materials makes for a substantial rise in material costs.

Which would be okay if the results translated over, but I have generally found that other materials combinations I try mean sacrificing either the control, the fine-grain of shading marks, the suppleness, or the tonal range that converge happily when I use Conte crayon on newsprint. Maybe it is a matter of choosing which to sacrifice. But it would be much easier to see my way to using costlier paper if I could anticipate marks that I liked as much or better than what something impermanent creates. Instead, the shift to better papers has all but invariably resulted in a less satisfying texture. In my mind, it's that additional 5 or 10% : the extra sublety that is manifesting in the newsprint drawings is what lifts them into the category of really strong work. 

But I'm feeling that it is time to try to translate that quality into more commercially viable materials. If push comes to shove, I choose making really good work on junk materials for my own satisfaction over making more pedestrian work for sale. (That's kind of where I've been at for a while in doing all these studies.)
But practically, having more saleable pieces should allow for more work time, more space and more materials, and more control over subject matter.

There are some fundamental questions about process versus product, and the role of that in art, and of the need for art to be timeless. I could cheaply sell a study on newsprint that could be enjoyed for three or four years, but after that it would be appreciably aged. I have lots of other studies with which that could be replaced, and regularly selling a bunch inexpensively makes sense from my working standpoint, were there lots of people okay with buying big, temporary art.  But that is not how the art paradigm works.  Representational art is all tied up with permanence, and memorialising for posterity, and bigger-ticket art commerce is invested in permanence, for investment value. Making digital facsimiles could preserve images archivally, but then it wouldn't be a drawing any more.

And I'm not entirely sure how invested I am in the permanence of the images I make - i.e how much importance leaving a historical record has. The experience of making the work is where the lion's share of the joy lies for me. Once I've passed on, I don't reckon having my name in history books will matter too much. But in the middle years of my adult life, mortality and questions of legacy still seem like a distant concern. Ego is obviously part of the equation - I post these studies with my name attached for people to look at. They are not being done in complete seclusion, nor am I posting them anonymously. I feel they are interesting to look at, and having people viewing them completes one kind of creative circuit involving artist, model and viewer.

I'm interested to hear anyone else's thoughts on any of this...

2nd Entry for Sept. 21, 2010

From bottom to top theses were three 20-minute poses in order of execution. I was a little awkward on the first one, properly warmed up by the middle one, and veering into overworking on the last one.

Overall it was a more successful session than the Friday that preceded it, and the two dovetailed well.

3rd Entry for June 11, 2010

These two poses were a little under 20 minutes each, and ended that evening.

6th entry for May 23, 2010

These were some 5-minute and 10-minute poses. Among other things, G- had a particularly impressive mass of hair to draw.

5th entry for February 9, 2010

These were 10-minute poses that C- towards the close of the evening. like many people who get engaged with life drawing, I appreciate the variety of different people who are available to pose. My assumption would have been that drawing C- two weeks in a row would be repetetive, but with each time she has worked for us she has grown stronger and more impressive in the aerial work. I felt that this was her best work yet, and the evening ended on a strong note.

5th Entry for January 26, 2010

These two 10-minute poses ended the evening.

3rd entry for October 20, 2009

These were a 20-minute sitting pose and a 10-minute standing one. The week before I was at the "Body Worlds" exhibit, and on some level the sight of all those muscle/bone displays was feeding into my drawing as well.

2nd entry for October 20, 2009

These were 20-minute poses. My drawing was fairly `on' that night, and I felt that F- was very present in his modelling on the evening - two elements that contribute to a good drawing night.

2nd entry for September 25, 2009

These were two 15-minute poses that B- took. At the time I was feeling quite rusty in terms of drawing, but the images are fairly strong in hindsight. What is lacking in terms of fluidity and proficiency of response can sometimes be redemed by the enthusiasm of returning to an activity one likes. It was a huge improvement on the Tuesday evening, which had been `rust-o-rama' night....

1st entry for June 30, 2009

D- was working on the Tuesday at Artists 25, and it was working out as a good night for me drawing-wise.
These were 10-minute studies.

3rd entry for June 28, 2009

These were 5-minute poses. Perhaps it was the rest i had got the previous night, perhaps it was my health coming back to full strength, perhaps it was the awareness of a week's teacing hiatus, or maybe it was the intellectual challenge of the afternoon's structural figure study, but whatever the reason/s I was having a good drawing night. My familiarity with J- as a model certainly helps, too.

3rd entry for May 15, 2009

All these poses were in the 15-minute and 20-minute range. G- 's work was really good that night, I felt.

3rd entry for April 7, 2009

These were all in the 20-minute range. The drawing was going well that night, which it usually does with J- working. The standing pose was strong, I felt, but the standout was the reclining figure. It's still far from perfect, but it is dramatic & pictorially interesting.
The head on the study sitting on the stool is weakly drawn,and a poor likeness, but the rest of it was acceptable enough to post, I feel.