At first we were asked to simply have a go at drawing a pose, without any advice or tutoring – We did a variety of exercises: drawing without looking; drawing in one stroke; drawing just outlines; just shadows; highlights; drawing poses with a decreasing amount of time for each; drawing with our back to the subject - look then mark; holding the pencil loosely; using charcoal; standing back from the paper; and eventually we brought it all together with a 20 minute study 'final piece'. Looking at this compared to our first drawing, and I was quite amazed at the progress in just one day. The improvement for me came with an increased consideration to the marks I was making and their ability to represent, to portray, and most importantly to communicate the form of the subject. And this meant having to really study and absorb the form of the subject matter – learning to look harder. I don't know if the skills in observing human posture will transfer directly, but there is definitely a benefit to my skill of 'finding' a photograph.
The workshop was very enjoyable. It was so revitalising to work with the delightfully simplistic process of pencil and paper, to just scribble away, allowing expression to carry itself, and being free from wrestling with cameras and light and framing and computers and memory cards and focusing and tripods and cables and ... zzzz. Having said that, I returned home with a real creative buzz and immediately started taking pictures.
Interesting to pick up on – I can see now why artists use the naked body for a subject so often. A bowl of fruit, will most of the time just look like a bowl of fruit, not very dynamic. Whereas the human body has such massive potential for variety in its form, so much there to study, to look for, and so many ways of depicting it.
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