Drawing is my meditation. Looking at a human (preferably undressed) for a long period of time and tracing their body onto paper is the only time when my brain quiets down and I take a break from thinking.
When you draw, you cannot think. You must only see. It’s a wonderful feeling, especially for someone whose brain simply won’t shut up.
The reality is that if you think, you draw badly. For instance, if you know something is a circle and you try to draw it and think, you will likely end up with a circle, as well as you can draw one freehand: a wonky circle. But that won’t be what it looks like in reality to our eyes. They see a misshapen oval!
These are the sketches from my latest Tuesday night life drawing with the Life Drawing Society in Holborn. We had 2, 5, and 20min poses. I had to leave halfway through the final 60min one to race the Ocado man home. So the last sketch is a 30min one.
It’s surprising how little you can draw in 2 minutes.
I very often end up drawing the backs of models. Not on purpose. That’s just how the luck of the poses is, sometimes!
Below, she is holding a katana…
Our model moved a lot. She could not keep still. If you didn’t draw a body part in under 5min, it’d be in another angle before you were done. Below, I caught her head’a outline… And then she moved!
And her head ended up in a completely different angle!
Next we had a break and the started again with a slower pose. 5min. After your hand loosens, you can draw a lot more in 5min!!
I rather like that last pose above.
The one below would be for 60min, so the model needed to be comfortable. (So she might move less)
Oh. And I did outrace the Ocado man. :)