Christchurch Photographer | Challenging myself with life drawing
Today I challenge myself with some life drawing. The Canterbury Westland branch of NZIPP organised a life drawing class at the Art’s Centre of Christchurch. I was so excited to attend today. It’s something I’ve never done before. There were about 10 of us, all with an easel and a piece of board on which to clip the paper.
Our teacher and model
The teacher was Grant who is very experienced in life drawing and very good at teaching. He introduced us to our life model who was a professional life drawing model in England for many years and has now come to Christchurch. Our life model has been a model for about 10 years in total. She is also a performance artist and is very comfortable in her own skin. We all gathered around as Grant explained what we were going to be doing and our model took off her sarong and Grant started drawing her and showing perspective and how to use the different charcoal and graphite.
Rapid drawings
Our first task was to do three minute rapid drawings of Virginia, standing at first. As a life model it is very tiring doing the standing poses hence why we did them very rapidly. I think it is also very good to do fast drawings first and you soon learn to let go of being perfect.
Not very good!
The first two or three drawings I did were not very good as I struggled with drawing legs, arms, feet and hands. A child could have done better.
On about the fourth drawing I seemed to get it right and I couldn’t say why. It was a pose facing away from me and had no complicated limbs coming towards me – maybe that made it easier for me.
Seated poses
When our life model started to do the seated poses we could draw for longer – approximately 10 minutes. The seated positions with limbs on weird angles or coming towards me or away from me posed a challenge for me. I got my perspective all wrong and Grant had to come and help me. He is a hard taskmaster and told me to be quiet and listen and watch. Eventually I started to get the hang of it.
Lying down pose and my nemesis Wendy
The last pose we had to draw was lying down on a table with a cloth. I found this extremely challenging. Although I struggled a little bit with the legs and feet are coming towards me, I got the torso pretty good. It didn’t help that I had Wendy next to me who is a photography teacher at ARA and extremely good at art. She brought all her own drawing materials and knew what to do.
Doing a “Wendy”
She has done life drawing over many years. I called her style “Doing a Wendy”. Doing a Wendy means you get a sharp piece of graphite and scribble and scribble and scribble until it looks amazing. She is very good with proportions and just very arty all around, creating masterpieces in five seconds flat. My first attempt looks like a child’s drawing. Actually it is probably worse than a child’s drawing.
As I watched Wendy, “doing a Wendy,” I started to get the idea, as well as from Grant’s instruction. I started to do shading on the last picture and tried to do some of the fabric. The light was also getting lower in the sky as it was now mid afternoon and the shadows on our model’s body were a lot more pronounced and made for a more interesting picture. We started at 11 am and the light was not good at that time, as it was very flat.
Take on the challenge!
As a photographer it is good to challenge yourself with different arts. This drawing class helps understand the human figure and also helps to understand light and how it falls on a person from a window. I would really recommend challenging yourself with a life drawing class, whether you are an artist or not. It really will be the hardest thing you will ever do in art – but also the most rewarding when you finally get a picture resembling a human!
