I do find the weekly life-drawing classes I attend to be interesting. Sometimes the reasoning behind some of the exercises is a bit obscure, but it is often the case that, after reflection, there does appear to be a logic to it all.
Last night we were asked to work on rolls of paper, and produce in quick succession a series of images as the model changed her position. The real challenge came, however, in the second half of the evening when, after having produced several of our own images we were asked to move to the easel of our neighbour to the left, and work there for two minutes before being asked to move on once again. I was puzzled by the intention of this until, as usual, I unrolled my sheets back at home and had an opportunity to reflect on what had happened.
I was struck by the fact that successive participants had left my work alone entirely, but had produced a collective image built up by a series contributions by later participants. There are several possible explanations for this behaviour, and I really cannot decide which one (if any) of these explains what was going on.
There was a notable difference in the kind of marks we were making, in that my lines were (on the whole) less bold and definite than those produced by other members of the group. Did they just think that my drawing was odd, and didn’t provide a comfortable context for their work? Was there some reluctance to “edit” others people’s work? (Although I did that to the images produced by fellow class members.) I wish that I had had the presence of mind to go round the class at the end to see if there were similar dramatic discontinuities between the work produced by other members of the class. It isn’t always clear what is going on in the minds of artists, and the trouble is that we rarely get to talk about this.