Category Archive

It was an art-filled three-day weekend. My big Christmas gift to Joy was a weekend workshop at the Institute of Mosaic Art in Oakland, coordinated with my Wonderful In-Laws so that they took care of Munchkin and we could take the class together. Joy had already taken a mosaic workshop in San Miguel, with results that you can see here. This was my first go at it–another art form, like quilt, collage, and assemblage, that makes things out of other, often broken, things–and I could see myself seriously getting into this medium. I can’t show the results, because our digital camera is broken and putting a 12″x12″ concrete stepping stone on my scanner would probably be a bad idea.

Then I had my figure drawing session on Monday as usual. I can’t miss it every time Joy and the munchkin have Monday off, so off I went while they had a nice morning at home together. I wanted to get a four-mile walk in, which means a circuitous route to the studio since it’s only about 2 miles away. Unsure how hilly the route I’d planned was, I left much more time than I needed, and with over half an hour to spare, I went to Arizmendi, the fantastic worker-owned bakery that has recently opened in the Mission District, and over my second breakfast, thought about what I wanted to do differently in the day’s session. The previous two sessions, I hadn’t liked my drawings much. I decided on a few approaches: be bolder with shading, especially making sure to put in all the small variations in surface; get back to putting in a dark background where that was what made an edge stand out, rather than inventing a line that wasn’t there; focus on just one part of the body with each drawing; and above all be brave. It ended up being a good session.

Another change I made was to bring some sketch-grade paper, which has a rougher texture than the newsprint I’ve been using. I don’t know if it deserves the credit for yesterday’s improvements, but I like the way it grabs the charcoal, and it feels like an achievement to draw on nice white paper without seizing up from a fear of mistakes.

I’ll post one or two drawings a day instead of one big gallery, so here are two, ten minutes each. The second one here is probably my favorite from the day–I like the shading on the belly and thighs.

The first drawing (shown here in two parts) is probably my favorite since I started going to the 23rd Street Studio last fall. The shadow running across her left leg and foot is too sharp, and there are a dozen other places where something isn’t quite right. But the belly and right thigh represent a breakthrough. Those expanses of skin where there isn’t much going on in the way of dramatic contours or shadows are hard for me; I have tended just to skip over them in the past, not quite able to capture, or even see, the subtleties of the light there. But the more I draw, the more I can see them, and show them, and this time it worked pretty well.

Click on an image to see the larger version.

I missed drawing last week because Joy and Munchkin had the day off and we had plans together. As it turned out, I was too sick to do anything but sleep.

I went in today focused on how to use the whole range from white to black with sufficient transitions in between. A rare glitch with a model meant we only had time for five drawings aside from the warmup gestures; here are the first three.

(Click on thumbnail to see larger version)

These are the only other three from last week that I like enough to post. On (e), the only really successful part was the hat, so I cropped it to that detail.

I’m pushing myself to go darker with the blacks, and the result is a kind of florid appearance that I dislike, as in (g) here. I’m trying to figure out what I did in the drawings where I went dark and had plenty of contrast but not that florid appearance. Why is (h), the one on the right, a success and (g), the one in the middle, is not?

Another day when I felt like I wasn’t hitting a groove, but now that I look at these, especially the third one, I think I actually did. It has a subtlety of shading I’ll have to study again before next time. That won’t be next Monday, because Joy and Munchkin have the day off, so it will be a family day.

This past Monday’s was definitely a session when I did not seem to be able to make the kind of marks I wanted to.  The charcoal seemed either too hard or too soft, which may have been true, as I was using some different charcoal than usual, and/or the too-hardness and too-softness might have been in the hand.  And yet hand and charcoal and model did connect in that torso of (c).  Moments of grace.

Some days, you’re in the drawing zone, and other days . . . not.  Today I just could not make anything I was really happy with.  On a couple of drawings, I thought the hands and feet were the best part (hence the detail shots that follow).  Maybe that was my problem–too much time spent on the hands and feet, not enough on the rest?  Whatever.  It’s all learning.

What continues to amaze me is how much I look forward to this time every week.  I know I’ve said it many times, here and elsewhere.  I just can’t get over how totally different I feel than a year ago, when I was about to go to San Miguel and (despite the thrill of going to Mexico) felt a sense of duty and dread about taking a drawing class.

It’s also striking how much harder it is for me to draw on my own than in the group.  I’ve experienced the same thing with meditation; the only time I’ve meditated regularly, and without more than minor resistance, was when I was part of a sangha.  One aspect is simple peer pressure.  I would be ashamed if I were one of the few people who didn’t show up.  Not exactly an enlightened motive, but as one of my favorite Buddhist aphorisms says, lotuses grow out of the muck at the bottom of the pond.  Attachment it surely was, but that attachment to status kept me planted on the cushion.

Buddhists give thanks for the three jewels:  the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha.  Originally the sangha meant the community of monastics, but when I give thanks for the sangha I always think of it primarily as the local community of practitioners.  I seem to rely on a sangha for art too.

I’ve been without my regular life-drawing session, as the regular schedule is suspended for December (it resumes Monday, yay), but there have been a few sessions here and there, and last night there was finally one at a time I could manage. It was great to get back to it.  (My plan to draw on my own every Monday morning lasted one week; I’ve had to either work or take care of the munchkin the rest of the Mondays of this month, though of course I could have found a different three hours.)

I’m feeling, and resisting, the urge to try (1) some color and (2) better paper than the newsprint I’ve been using. I probably will try other paper soon, because it really makes a difference to the process and appearance, but using newsprint helps keep my punishing perfectionism at bay; it reminds me this is just practice, stuff to be thrown away (though frequently scanned first, so I can look back and learn from what I’ve done). As for color, with this figure drawing I just want to keep working on the basics for a while yet.  Maybe a long while.

Here are several from Wednesday, in the order I drew them, and from the shortest to the longest pose.  Interestingly, I think that besides the 45-minute pose, the most successful are two of the 7-minute poses (drawings 12 29 10 d and 12 29 10 f).  I do like the hands and foot on the 20-minute pose, though.

Today was the last day of the term at the drawing studio, so I might not get to do figure drawing until January. Now that I’ve devoted every Monday morning to art for several weeks, I’m in the habit; I missed it badly the week I couldn’t go because Munchkin was sick. So Mondays 9:30-12:30 will be my art time for the month of December too.

I’m trying to go darker and use more shading/planes, relying less on line. As if by magic, that turns out to make light more visible in the drawings. Lumos!

I’m also trying to work on a bigger scale, which makes the drawings hard to scan in one piece, hence the “top” and “bottom” for most of these.

It’s hard to put these online sometimes because the flaws haunt me (what have I done to her poor right leg in the 20-minute drawing?), but I’m committed to being publicly imperfect as a way of wearing down the perfectionism that made such a daunting wall between me and drawing for years. I don’t post everything I draw, for which, believe me, you should be thankful, but I also don’t wait to have something to post that I’m 100% satisfied with. Who knows when that might happen.

A few drawings from today’s session, ranging from seven minutes (the first two, which are two parts of one drawing too large to scan in one piece) to thirty (the last two, ditto).

Last week I only brought charcoal and graphite, as distinct from actual pencils of same, which had a wonderful effect: I had to draw more in planes and broad strokes. I am trying to do this more instead of focusing so much on lines and fine detail, so this was good. Today I brought the charcoal pencils along too, and used them along with the charcoal sticks, when sharper lines were called for.

Click thumbnails to see larger size.

Oh, I love me this figure drawing.  I just went to my last session in San Miguel, but San Francisco offers plenty of opportunities (albeit several dollars more per session).  I need to find a session that includes a couple of really long poses.  The longest we did here were 15-16 minutes.  It was frustrating, but forced me to work faster, which is a discipline of its own.  I also realize, looking at the drawings, that I unconsciously compensated for the brief time by focusing on one thing in one drawing, one in another.  So some of these have the gesture just right but I didn’t do anything on the hands and feet; some have a lot of shading in one area, a limb completely ignored elsewhere; etc.  Still, I look forward to some 45- or 90-minute poses so that I can really get into more detail and not have “not enough time” as an excuse.

It’s good to see these all in chronological order–I realize I really am learning something.  It’s reassuring, because at the beginning of each session I feel all thumbs and it takes me several drawings before I can get a gesture down on paper to any kind of satisfaction.  They are very short poses, of course, but the source of the problem is not that I only have two minutes, it’s that I need to get my hands and eyes and brain all into drawing mode afresh.  Well, right, that’s why life-drawing sessions always start with these warmups–because centuries of art students have had the same challenge, and their wise teachers have figured out that making them do long, “supposed-to-be”-more-polished drawings when they aren’t warmed up is just going to frustrate them.

Here are some of my favorites from each session.  You can see larger versions by clicking on the images.