Drawing From Life

On Sunday, I tried my hand at figure drawing for the first time since 1995. A friend has been hosting a semi-regular live drawing session at his place with several of my favorite LA artists. It was a privilege to be invited, and a chance to get my drawing muscles back in shape. Couldn't pass that up, even in the rain.

We had an incredible model who gave us dynamic poses and exuded CALM, which was perfect for all the internal stressing out I was doing about making the most of this opportunity. Working with so many talented artists makes it hard to think about creating my own art again. Seems odd, but that's the way my brain works. I'm inspired on an almost daily basis to do it, but the doing part is hard sometimes.

This session was structured perfectly. We started with five minute gestural poses, 10 minutes, and then graduated on to 20 minute poses that let us spend more time with our work. It couldn't have been better. I was working in charcoal to keep things loose and it worked. I tried switching to pastel at the last minute, but decided against it. It was hard to switch to a harder pigment, especially when I had finally, after almost two hours, finally reached a point where my hand was continually moving on the paper.

This whole experience was more proof that it is vitally important to return to the passions that you may have put up on a tall shelf and forgotten. There are so many experiences that pass through our lives, and there's no reason that we can't find them again and discover that they're still a part of who we are.