I enjoyed a very unusual experience today. I was invited to take part in an informal life-drawing class, organised by a model I have worked with over many years. It was only possible to fit three artists in her tiny flat, but what we lacked in space we made up for in time. In the life-drawing group I attend each week the longest time we have in order to complete a study of the model is twenty minutes. This is actually quite seriously constraining, and it is never possible to bring a drawing to anything like a state of finish. At today’s session we enjoyed two periods of one and a half hours each, in addition to the warming-up period. It was a radically different experience.
There are things to be said in favour of working to a short deadline. It does concentrate the mind wonderfully, and there is invariably a sense of spontaneity about the results. Inevitably, however, under these conditions it is never possible to consider carefully one’s relation to the model, or to attend to aspects of finish.
As usual I have returned from the session and pinned my efforts up on the easel in order to given them a good critical going-over. I anticipate learning, apart from anything else, from the fact that I have departed from my usual practice by using watercolour. It will be interesting to discover what other differences there might be in the results having been permitted to take my time.