Figure drawing, low-bandwidth edition

[metawidget]

Friday, inspired by sassy_red_head, I went to the Ottawa sitting of Atelier Denu, a life drawing workshop where for two hours, a dozen or so people sit in a circle around a nude model and draw them (her in this case). No pedagogy, bring your own materials, Shawn the organizer just books the room, arranges for a model, keeps time and collects your $5. It's been over a decade since I've drawn a nude model, and perhaps it has been too long.

I found the place in the upper reaches of a (the?) fine art building at the university of Ottawa by following someone who looked like she knew where she was going (and asked if I was looking for the life drawing workshop). I got oriented pretty quickly, found out that a “donkey” is a bench that you straddle that holds your drawing surface at a nice angle, and made my way over to a spot near sassy_red_head, only to realize about halfway across the room that carrying a somewhat heavy bench in one hand with your wonky arm isn't a good idea. I got a couple of people to take the things I'd been carrying so I didn't drop them, and got myself straightened out and re-socketed. After that, the night went much better. As an aside, naproxen is my new favourite post-dislocation painkiller.

The actual drawing was in poses of increasing lengths, going from two minutes up to twenty. I'd brought a big 18-by-24 newsprint pad, a smaller sketchbook, compressed charcoal, conté pencil and drawing pencils, but wound up working exclusively big and with the chunkier charcoal and conté: it felt good and I find it's easier to work fast in big movements. I did a lot of contours and work with negative space, some shading and lots of nice dense markmaking. It felt really good, and I think it was pretty different from what everyone else was doing (that I saw, at least). My faces and proportions were hit-and-miss, but I didn't feel like I was starting from zero. I'm going to try and make it to more of these.

I'm not shy to share some drawings, but I'm on my parents' computer in dialup-land while we are visiting them, so I will post them in a few days.