1st entry for May 3, 2009

On the Sunday night, S- came and worked for us. These were 2-minute poses.

3rd entry for May 1, 2009

These were all in the 15-minute range. This spring I have been teaching a class that encourages messing around and experimenting, and my own work is that little bit looser around the edges because of that. (not super-loose, but not as tight about contolling things as I sometimes get.)

I culled out a couple of hundred studies to consign to the recycle bin today. it's something I do each season. There are 2 or 3 culls: first are the works that are drawn & not worth recording. That's about half of each session, depending on the day. (some have gone quite well of late). Of the ones I post, I go back and clear away another 30 to 40% that are good enough to share, but not worth keeping. Later I go back & review those.

What you see here is probably the top 45% of what I do in studies. So much of life drawing is editing. If I only kept the top 5% of what was left, that would still be over a hundred studies a year, but each would be really strong. It's hard though, to make the cuts. I get sentimental about things I've drawn, and the time invested. But they are all on 24 x 36" sheets of paper, which take up room.

How do others of you go about cutting your work back?

2nd entry for May 1, 2009

These studies are all in the 10-minute range. I was having a fairly good drawing night, that night.

1st entry for May 1, 2009

On Friday, F- was over at the TSA. (no aerial session on the Thursday that week). These were two 5-minute poses she took.

2nd entry for April 28, 2009

(This post has garnered a couple of comments now - happy to learn who some of the viewers of this blog are. The night it documents was a little out of the ordinary, and affords a forum for some dialogue. I'd really like to hear other peoples input on any of this. Especially G- 's perception of the evening, if he reads this: this was my take on the night - hope I have not given a skewed account. Anybody else who was there, I'd like to know your respose, too.)


These were all 20-minute poses. It was slightly unusual evening, as open drawing sessions go. In the sessions that I attend for practice - and connection and inspiration - the models choose what poses they take. From earlier discussions with him, I know that G- is very interested in the opportunity to push the sexual content/context in his modelling. (that is, I should add, something I basically support in the right context - we have discussed, and I gave him feedback, on what might constitute good erotic poses)

But in the situation of an open drawing session, that erotic focus gives me pause, as I respond to it in a couple of ways. Given our society's conflation of nudity with sexuality, art instruction -and drawing sessions- go out of their way to downplay the sexual component of drawing bodies. Being sexual creatures, almost any situation from an office to a day at the beach may have a sexual component. But I think that looking at an undressed person is viewed by many as almost inextricably related to something sexual.

Personally, I cannot deny that that is a part of drawing people. But it is not the whole thing. I respond to people on multiple layers - desire, empathy, fascination, various emotions are all part of the mix. (That mix shifts too, on every occasion) But what is most important for me is looking beyond a simple viewing to be excited. I want to see the full spectrum of who people are - their fragilities and oddities, plus what is physically appealing about them. Part of what makes drawing people's bodies important to me is that so often we don't get that more full-spectrum view of people. We get an emphasis on idealization or figures situated in conventions of the `erotic'.

In figure drawing sessions, any sexual component to the practice is the `500 pound elephant' that is present, but stays unacknowledged. That is likely for the best. It is not the point of the exercise, and not everyone is capable of responding in a mature or considerate way to that. People who model are not usually doing this as a sexual display, and they would be very uncomfortable if this was foregrounded while they were working. Drawing a live person is a situation of permission, and generally the contract of understanding is that "I will permit you to look at me, but I expect you to detach your response to me from your physical reactions.' So it is `look but don't touch' , and often "in the context of learning and art, you may look, but what you depict should be respectful of my feelings, and how I am comfortable being seen by the world." Different sitters have different comfort levels as to how they are depicted. there is perhaps a concern too that if some of the time the life drawing is a more sexualised thing, that will have a spillover `halo effect', making the whole process seem to be a more prurient thing.

On the Tuesday, G- brought the elephant more out in the open when he announced that he was going to do some more `edgy' poses, and took a pose lying blindfolded with a cord wrapped around his genitals & draped over his torso. It was a very mild bondage allusion, but did polarise the people drawing (who were only 6 and all males that night). A couple of people were perceptibly uncomfortable, and one person left.

I was fine with it. Sexual expression is part of our life experience, so to not include it is to miss a part of the whole, and seems wierd to never be addressed. But I am not so sure this was the right forum. Many of the Artists 25 people seem to be a more conservative crowd, and they have enough difficulty in getting participants that it isn't good to alienate those that do show up. Also, his more sexual poses came out of left field for those there, as that is rather atypical of open sessions. That was followed up by him advising anyone `easily offended to leave now", and the last pose, which had him kneeling with his lower torso up. (interestingly - I've seen him- and others - do similar poses, but the contextualising introduction made it hard to read this any other way than as a sexual display) One more exited, and the remaining three worked away. (to be fair though, it isn't uncommon for people to leave towards the end of the session there, regardless of the model)

G- is an excellent model, and he holds his poses solidly. I was impressed that he was able to sustain the kneeling pose on the balls of his feet for 20 minutes. It was a good drawing challenge. It moved the representation into more sensitive territory, and shook people up a little. All of these things are good in my books. Personally, in a shared situation like that I think it would have been better to sound out the crowd, rather than force things on them. (It is different with a stable group that meets on a steady basis, but A25 has a shifting drop-in group of drawers, who have no advance idea of the night's modelling fare.) In the end all of these poses are very innocuous in the grander stream of how bodies are presented today. I find myself wondering how would the dynamic have differed if it was a woman modelling. Would the men have left? G- has said that where he has done similar stuff for mixed groups, the women liked it, while the men felt uncomfortable. Is it men being uncomfortable with the possibility of male desirability?

For me, I'm down with it, but with fair advance warning. Guess I'm not an `epater les Bourgeois'* kind of guy. More `bring them round slowly'. Other drawers might disagree. sometimes, being pulled unexpectedly into new territory is the best way to get there.



(*shock the Bourgeois - was a French avant-garde motto from the late 19th century)


.

1st entry for April 28, 2009

When I arrived at Artists 25 on the Tuesday, I found that G- was working. These were two 10-minute poses and a 20-minute standing one.

2nd entry for April 26, 2009

These are two 15-minute sitting poses and a 10-minute standing one. In the more straddling pose, the amount of reflected light is such that it gives C- a bit of a 'chrome-plated' effect. I would have been better off cutting down the brightness of one of the light sources.