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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.

Only one more week remains of my drawing class, and I think I’m going to take another. I’m having a great time, I’m learning a lot, and I think it will take a few more months of daily practice for me to really learn, deep in my bones, that I can pick up the pencil and make good things happen—that it’s still a joy to do even when I don’t like the results. Right now, on my no-class days when I’ve promised myself I’ll draw, I still have a reluctance to start. I have done two drawings on those days that I’m happy with, though, a portrait of my daughter and one of myself. The latter is old hat—all art students draw themselves a zillion times—but drawing the munchkin was a big step. I have often wanted to, but the prospect of falling short, as I would inevitably do, and (so I imagined) messing up this face I adore so much . . . *shudder.* It was a breakthrough to give it a try. The drawing and the falling-short.

It’s amazing to discover how much fear I have around art. I knew I was scared of drawing, but I’ve been sobered by how intimidating it is even to make collages–as if I have forgotten how to play when it comes to art. This morning before art class, I had a chat with a woman who’s teaching a collage workshop in the studio next door, who said several things I know to be true and want to keep in mind re: making art, all in the friendly tone of someone who faces these demons all the time herself:

-It’s all an adventure, full of surprises. Just follow things where they lead you and don’t be too attached to any one version, or too dismayed by dead ends.

-The unexpected places the pieces will lead you are what make art so rewarding to do.

-Fear is a sign that you’re in new territory, not staying in a rut.

-Everyone has these doubts about their abilities. We know from Michelangelo’s writing that he was dissatisfied with his work.

-Being afraid isn’t necessarily a problem, but thinking there’s something wrong with being afraid is.

Something else that has helped dispel fear over the past couple weeks has been the love that’s welled up as I look so closely at some little piece of the world. I fell in love with a plant in the grounds as I drew it, and was sad when I came in this week and found that the gardeners had pulled it up! (Another student said “But you memorialized it!”) Drawing people, even the strangers who model for us, makes me feel like I love them. Their bodies are so beautiful! (Do they know it? Can they possibly look in the mirror and see themselves with that appreciation for how wondrously made they are? I hope so . . . ) I find myself, not only thinking “I have to get that curve of shoulder right, it’s so gorgeous,” but feeling like it’s personal: that I want to do right by these people and their beautiful humanness. That feeling last week made it possible to go home and draw my daughter.

Click for drawings