My tutors at the Ilkley Art School are constantly presenting us with new challenges in the life-drawing class I attend there. Well …. “attend” is now, of course, something of a euphemism. Under the current “lockdown” regime they are emailing the students suggestions for tasks that can be done at home, and the results emailed in. Today’s task is one I’ve never attempted before.
We have been asked to do a copy of a figure-based drawing by any well-known artist. (Thoughtfully they have added the URLs of the main galleries so we can browse their collections if we don’t have good printed illustrations to hand.) The idea is not to see how accurately we can copy, but an opportunity for us to respond to the original in a personal and creative fashion.
The closest I’ve come to this kind of thing before was a copy I made many years ago when attending a course on pastel techniques. I did a copy in pastel of a Van Gogh landscape originally in oils. It was an interesting exercise. Consequently I’m looking forward to this new test. My first response is to choose the work of an artist whose work I like, and for which I already have some sympathy. That might make for a good opportunity to take an approach with which I can identify, and put that up against my own interpretation. My initial response might be to stick to pastels and look at the work of somebody whose pictures I know that I like–perhaps Edgar Degas or Mary Cassatt. We’ll have to see. It’s just as well that I’ve finished my “Wassail” project, so the decks are clear.