Keyhole Sessions- life drawing with spice

Just got back from Tuesday night life drawing. This was my first time to this session; it is rather unique.  The models dress in kinky clothes, and strip down, and for the second half, another model comes out and both models are in rope bondage of sorts (check it out here) . A nice change of pace from regular life drawing.

I also picked up a new life drawing book today, called "Force: Dynamic Lifedrawing for Animators." A book dealing with a method of looking at Force in a model- where the energy flows, etc.  A great book for drawing dynamic and active compositions; and chock full of great insights. His reasoning and thought process if phenomenal, as are his insights into ways to break the model down.

One thing I have found that makes a good life drawing book is the logic of its method- it builds upwards, from gesture through form and structure and volume, with each stepping leading naturally from the last.  The eye is something that needs to be trained- you can't draw what you can't see (or visualize.) Most of us never really LOOK at things.  We make assumptions about what we see.  Learning to draw is learning to communicate information with line, learning how to see with  your hand.

One of my favorite insights so far from this book is thus:

 "As important as line is, remember that the drawing are not about line.  They are about ideas. The line is your idea.  Don't do a drawing  for the sake of beautiful lines.  Create a drawing that expresses your experience."

This is something I am really trying to hammer home.  A good drawing is alive- a good drawing does not try to copy, but rather gets at the inner essence of a thing.  It is not a reproduction, it is a communication.  At its best, a good drawing communicates something to the viewer to help them really SEE the subject.  It is about expressing an idea- and the artists tools are lines, shapes, forms, various visual cues to do this. If we wanted perfect copies, we would just take a picture.  A good artist brings life to a drawing.

I tried to bring some of the ideas from this book into todays life drawing.  I was disappointed, however, that I didn't get a seat that allowed me a full pad of newsprint.  So I worked in my sketchbook, a little smaller that is proper for getting big sweeping curves and lines.  There also were not enough short poses for my taste. I like a good 10 one minutes in a row to really warm up, then maybe 5 two's.  Oh well.

Here are some of my drawings from today.  I am not happy with most of them (but I never am. ) I am learning that it is all a learning experience.  Thomas Edison once said "I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."  An error is only a mistake if you don't learn from it.

The hard part is putting my images up for the internet to see.  But, that is the whole point of this blog exercise...

Enjoy.

 10 minute

 10 minute

 5 minute

 20 minute

25 minute

 20 minute

 10 minute