The other night I felt that I had recovered sufficiently from my horrible cold to make it to the weekly figure-drawing class in Ilkley. When the tutor enquired, on my arrival, how I was I’m afraid that I gave him both barrels! I don’t think that I was fishing for sympathy, but it is possible that I was getting in a preemptive excuse for what I expected to be a lack-lustre performance. Very kindly, he offered me the opportunity to sit on a stool while drawing instead of standing, as usual. It would have been churlish to refuse.
This turned out to have been a mistake. I was at sixes and sevens all evening, and nothing about the experience seemed to be right. I even found that I was holding the charcoal in a different way, so that the marks I was trying to make never made it onto the paper. Admittedly the tutor was trying to make us adopt a different approach to our habitual ways of working …. and that was interesting. Nevertheless, I spent the entire evening like the proverbial fish out of water, floundering about as if I had never drawn before.
The result was predictably unsatisfying. My usual practise is, on my return home, to spread out my work on the table, see what appears to deserve further reflection, and pin these pieces on the notice-board. On this occasion, however, the entire evening’s work went straight into the bin! Not surprisingly, I spent a good deal of time the next day reflecting on the experience, and I came to the conclusion that the entire disaster had a great deal to do with my attempt to draw while seated. It is a very different experience, requiring the modification of any number of habits. Interesting! I can’t see myself trying this on a regular basis.
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