Last Thursday I was lucky enough to grab a place in the weekly life drawing session after classes. The model was a middle-aged man called Peter, which was admittedly a challenge. In the sessions I’d attended in summer, I’d only ever drawn female models.
My placement in the room was to the side, which meant I got a LOT of foreshortened poses. No complaining, though – it’s the perfect storm of challenges that help me improve.
These were two five-minute poses. You can see I realised I had to loosen up after the first, and opted for charcoal instead. I learned that with a pose as short as this, there’s really no point measuring because you’re going for a gesture and a dynamic feeling.Above are ten two-minute poses, each immediately after the other. Honestly, I felt like I’d run a marathon after this was over. This was invaluable for my eye, but I remember looking at everyone else in the room and exchanging mutually exhausted glances.Here I was lent a thick brown graphite stick. It was water-soluble, and loads of fun to play with. This was a 15-minute pose, and Peter was heavily foreshortened. My eye was clearly in it this time – I’m pleased with this drawing. After a short break, the final pose was 25 minutes long. I found measuring this quite difficult, but the foreshortening was again a good challenge.
The practice that the two-hour session afforded me was so useful. It’s quite an awkward time of the evening, at 4:30 to 6:30pm – because staying in from class can be exhausting and it makes for a very long day. I’ll definitely try to attend again, though.
Gemma's Art 
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