Today I decided that I would begin the New Year very worthily, and start the overdue process of clearing out the heaps of old material I have in drawers and portfolios around the studio. I started with the drawer that contains my very earliest drawings, based upon rock-climbing. It was a very mixed feeling.
Of course, there was that surge of sentimental recognition of things I hadn’t seen for years. They went back to the time just after my retirement from the university, in 2001, when I first threw myself into art. It was a very mixed experience. Several of the rock studies are quite worthy, but I have to admit that the figure-drawing often let me down. Encouraged by the fact that I sold several of these, I persisted with the theme, but without giving sufficient attention to the human figures. With hindsight I can see that the pictures for which I used photographs of the human subjects were the ones that worked.
I can see now where I went wrong. The landscape was based upon sound observation, but too often I would insert figures created in the imagination, and that didn’t always work. These days, not only have I devoted much more time to life-drawing classes, but I have become assiduous in using live models where human figures are required. Perhaps with that lesson in mind I might allow myself to return to the subject of climbing again.