1st entry for April 23

Some 24 hour flu-ey thing had hit me on
the Tuesday of that week, so I didn't get out to draw til Thursday at Diane's studio. J - was working, in her stripey ensemble. She started out on silk straps, and these poses were all 30 seconds up to a minute.

4th entry for April 19, 2009

These were 15-minute poses, plus the one 20-minute lying-down pose. I was happy with the evening's efforts, though I was a bit heavy-handed: the shading all got quite dark, I notice in retrospect.
That, and the bench is crooked in one study and K- 's lower back is shaded awkwardly in the upright sitting view - she doesn't seem to sit properly on the bench, and the belt of her robe trails away from her like some mishap. Her upper back I am quite pleased with, all the same.

3rd entry for April 19, 2009

These poses were all in the 10- to 15-minute range. Perhaps because I hadn't been able to do any sketching for a few days, I was getting a lot of information down quickly and with gusto when the opportunity presented itself.
Also, K- is someone whose face I found fairly easy to set down quickly, leaving more time to set down additional shading on the of the drawing. Not quite so many 'head and shoulders' studies.

2nd entry for April 19, 2009

These were some of the 5-minute poses. One of the qualities that K- brings to her modelling is emotive facial expression. Most models let their face settle into a relaxed, `mask' state when they are sitting/standing. K- usually has some sort of expression manifesting. On some people that can look somewhat forced, but for her it seems to come naturally. Also, she will often have `in between' expressions - not a grin, but some part-smile that has ambiguity.
Which brings up some interesting questions around the whole idea of authenticity in modelling. While writing this, it sounds like I'm setting up a duality where a face with expression has more `reality' to it than a face at rest. But expressions are largely fleeting, so to try to hold one for an extended period is an artifice (but then holding one's body immobile for long periods is artificial as well.) A face in `neutral' is a true state of that person, but it is the cake without the icing of expression.
I lean towards the idea of drawing what is `true' about what I see, but that truth is existing in a very unnatural setting. The adage that art is `a lie which tells the truth' remains a resonant one.

1st entry for April 19, 2009

The TSA's Open House occupied all my time for several days, and closed off studio access there for the duration. On Sunday, the school's facilities were up & running, and it was nice, in the aftermath, to get to draw again. The studio was full of people, which suggested that a number of people felt the same way.
K- was the model that night. These were some 2-minute poses that she took.

4th entry for April 10, 2009 (the 200th post!)

Two 15-minute poses and a 20-minute reclining pose as well.

I was alternating sketching and mounting plywood/drywall during breaks. A really happy discovery occured when F- , a model who also comes out drawing checked out what I was doing. I remarked that I was still lacking one necessary piece of drywall. Turns out she had just the thing at home, and could bring it in a couple of days later. This was great, as I had been wanting to fix a spot in the studio for at least 4 years, but never got around to getting supplies for it. It worked out as a field of dreams "if you build it" sort of solution.

Maybe in part bouyed by the prospect of long-desired supplies, the last drawings went well. I am very happy with the head study of L- , as it is unmistakably her.

* in this Blogspot blog I am much less statistic-happy, but it is worth noting that this marks 200 posts. That is since this blog's inception at the start of December last year. As much as possible, I've tried to stick to a regimen of at least one post per day.

3rd entry for April 10, 2009

These were 10-minute and 15-minute poses. Sometimes people have a misconception that artists desire only to draw r paint people who fit into the mold of societal bodily ideals. One thing I like about L- as a model is that she does not fit that mold, but is a person with an undeniable beauty of her own. But when I look at it, the concept that gets thrown around as `beauty' is a limiting one, because it gets used to validate one set of attributes as good, and to invalidate others.
I prefer to think of beauty as a quality that everyone manifests, in different ways, and that is part of what I seek to set down in a drawing.