Letter (Life Drawing)

Dear Franklin and Stephanie,

Thanks for coming over last week. I had a really great time talking art with the two of you. And I really appreciated what you had to say about my paintings. More importantly, I took your suggestions seriously, and to prove it, I can show my drawings from last Saturday. As I usually do I went to Dorian and Liana's for figure drawing and I tried to put some of your ideas into practice.

Our model was Simone. This is the second time I've drawn her; she's an excellent model who comes up with interesting poses. Unfortunately she comes up with poses that interest Dorian and Liana but not, so much, me. I try to think of it as a challenge. For example, Dorian absolutely loves it when Simone uses fabric in her pose. Personally I have zero interest in drapery. If I did, I could just stay home and sketch the valances.

Anyway. We started off with short poses and for once I was almost on time so I actually got to draw the two-minute gestures. Usually when I look at the model's pose, I ask myself -- not really consciously, but this is how I think of it when I think of it -- I ask myself, "What's the story of this pose?" In other words, I try to find the lines of the pose that intrigue me and zoom in on those. I can get one or two drawings done per short pose that way.

But you guys told me I should try to draw some full figures, should try and get the whole pose on the page. Most of the time when I've tried that I've failed miserably; the paper always seems too small. And that's independent of the size of my paper. My drawings always expand to be bigger than the page. But you suggested I try, so try I did. In fact I'll probably always remember, when sketching, when Franklin took a napkin and began drawing: "Spine, weight-bearing leg, non-weight-bearing leg, ribcage, and so on...." That's what I get for hanging out with a pedant.

You can see from these three sketches that I'm rusty. I still didn't quite get all of Simone on there, for one thing, and for another, well, I didn't capture much of anything. It was very frustrating after my usual method.

After a while of that we moved on to five-minute poses. I was able to do a bit better with those, even though Simone used her black robe to make my life difficult.

Then I got fed up and decided to try your suggestion, Franklin, with using two different shades of ink. I watered down some of my sumi ink in a cup and used it to sketch in Simone's figure, then outlined it in undiluted ink. For that step I broke out [drumroll please] The Most Expensive Brush I Own. Yes, a couple of weeks ago I went hogwild (or, really, weasel-wild) and bought a Raphaël Number 4 Round for US$35 (I see now I should've ordered it from Dick Blick!). I'm scared to death of ruining it, but I broke it out anyway. I still didn't have time to finish the sketches before the pose changed, but I liked the look.

Then I decided to chuck it and just do an ink sketch like I used to.

That might have been a ten-minute pose, I'm not sure. In any case, eventually we moved on to the longer poses, some of which seem to go on for days and days, as Dorian will decide he likes a pose and run it for two 20-minute periods, or maybe even three. Because he hates me. Those poses go on for so long I end up moving around to find different angles because there's simply nothing I can do that'll take me that long. Well, I won't say nothing. I can do color work, or a really detailed sketch with shading and all. But I don't always feel like it. So here are three from the first pose.

The first one is the best in terms of portraiture: That really is exactly what Simone looks like. But I think I shouldn't have added the white pastel highlights. Then here are five from the final pose.

You can see the fourth one got away from me; her right breast kind of wandered south (I don't even know how these things happen). I did another one in that same style with everything in its place and Simone liked it enough to take it.

I really liked the messiness of the gray ink (by the time I was done I had six cups with varying dilutions of ink) and the way it worked with the strong brush lines. I also really liked the spots where two shades bled into each other. Very groovy.

So there you go, Franklin and Stephanie: Now you know someone takes you seriously.

-- Chris