On Drawing as A Lifetime Activity
Horse Head in wax crayon by me at age 8, when I wanted a horse like this to be real, and standing out in the barn waiting for me.
I am taking a break from painting, just for the next few weeks, I am enrolled in a life drawing class at The Artists Guild in Sturgeon Bay WI, with the instructor Craig Blietz and about 9 students, I am learning a lot in these three hour sessions about anatomy, weight bearing muscles and light...not to mention the advantages of a light hand, using a knitting needle to sight the proportions of head to shoulders to hips, to knees. That was always something that I avoided, it drove me nuts, proportion.ugh.
We are drawing from a model who has challenged us with some dramatic lighting and articulated poses. Everyone in the class brings with them a fairly competent level of experience, but its the masterful words of our instructor that has us all marveling at how quickly time goes by, from doing 4 six minute poses to twenty minutes to forty, suddenly its 9pm and we are packing to go home. Craig has encouraged us and challenged us simultaneously, at the end of each 3 hours session we walk around looking at each others work, our errors and victories out there for all to assess.
My friend artist Emmett Johns talked about the need to draw, and he keeps at it with life-drawing groups in New Mexico, and it was because of his urging that I decided I should get back in the ring and do this. I have not had a life drawing class for nearly 20 years, last time with artist Loren Wiley at the West Bend Art Museum in the mid 1990's. Before that I had a semester at ISU with Brenda Jones, who had studied with Jules Kirschenbaum at Drake University, the lineage is staggering really, when considering the background that Craig and other masters bring to the teaching experience.
It is getting harder for me to deal with the physical requirements, can I stand for more than 10 minutes, not really, can i climb the 30 some steps up to the drawing studio, not without some slow steady pausing every now and then, can I sit with elevated arms drawing, sort of, but by the end of the night I was dropping my conte crayon every few minutes, and finding small relief in my Chinese drum movement to loosen the side ache that was reminding me I am not 40 any more. After our 4th session I may sign on at the drawing co-op, also run by the Artists Guild. I am so grateful to have landed in this community and can take advantage of these opportunities.
Drawing has never come easy for me. I have known some people who had a natural gift for it, I did not, but it was a gift to have the compelling urge to pick up a crayon and make marks and that urge has never left me. A few books saved from youth are evidence to that, with drawings of birds and rabbits and horse heads along with other scribbles of sun, trees and farm animals littering the margins and front piece of Childrens Book of Prayer and bird identification books. So thanks to people like Craig and Loren and Brenda, and way back, my highschool art teacher Hildred Finson, and my mother Doris Stidwell, who would draw for me during the church services just to keep me quiet. My drawing gets more interesting if not improved in many ways because of them.
