The Drawing Board

Day two.

As promised, I’m exhausted but my mind is racing. This is hard stuff. Most of my classmates have some kind of relevant art training in their backgrounds. I do not. This is hard for all of us, but I definitely have my work cut out for me. Above is a picture of the cast that I spent the afternoon drawing or taking to the “block in” stage of drawing. I didn’t even take a picture of these drawings, not because they were so bad that I didn’t want to, but because they were so bad I didn’t think to! And not really so much “bad” as just wrong. I know I can catch up quickly with lots of focused practice.

I believe this will be the great meditation of this year: focus. I don’t have a focus problem, but I’ve never needed the kind of focus that I need now. Even design hauls when I jam for hours into the night only interrupted by the annoyance of having to pee are nothing compared to the sustained mental acrobatics of the atelier. I believe this kind of focus will come with practice supported by my treatment of it as a skill to be pursued.

Life room was a blast this morning. I’m so excited to be drawing. We were doing gestures, five minute poses where we need to get down the general impression of the pose focusing on the large lines and movement. In three hours with several breaks we got to do a lot of drawings and I was really feeding off of clearing out the cobwebs and remembering what I learned in the short pose class I took earlier this summer. I’m so glad I took that class, taught by an atelier alum. I feel energized in the life room. You learn so much from every single drawing.