I am discovering that there are several benefits that attend participation in the life-drawing class UI go to each week. Recently it has seemed that the instructor has an inexhaustible supply of media and techniques which we are invited to try. Last night we were asked to work with a combination of ink and conte crayon. I never would have thought to put those together, but it did have an evident purpose, in that they produce very different kinds of line, for a start. Then the crayon responds to the texture of the surface, to which the ink seems to be pretty well indifferent.
I stumbled on a neat trick, in that attempting to remove some of an ink wash with a proprietary cleaning cloth I discovered that it left on the paper a print of the texture of the cloth, which I was able to utilise in the drawing. The whole experience serves to “open us out” to a wider variety of possibilities. It’s very liberating! life-drawing,
Another feature of these events that I find useful is the timing of poses. We are likely to begin with a series of poses held only for one minute, before moving gradually to longer ones, and ending the session with a pose of twenty minutes. There is nothing like a one-minute pose to remove your inhibitions! Just get some marks on the page …. now!
I suppose that it is this element of being pushed to attempt new techniques, and escape rooted inhibitions, that is the most valuable aspect of this group. It stands in sharp contrast to a life-drawing group I attended several years ago, which was organised by a well-known artist. The main purpose of our participation was to cover the costs of the model whom he wanted to paint anyway. We were all just left to do our own thing. I left the group after very few sessions, having been completely without challenge or growth.