Drawing Naked Ladies Gets More Interesting

an assortment of drawing surfaces

I love to draw and am very proficient at it. Not only does it come naturally to me, but I also spent some intensive years in Drawing classes in Art School. Then for many years, I did not draw very much though I continued to paint. Last year, helping my son prepare a drawing portfolio, got me re-interested. I took him to a life model drawing session nearby so I could instruct him and he could draw. At one session, I paid the fee and drew too. It was fun at first, but not really compelling and I began to feel bored. He went off to art school, and I spent the next winter making several detailed large drawings of my children and my house. It was heavenly to be drawing again. The figure-drawing sessions loomed in my memory. I challenged myself to think of a way to get interested in "drawing naked ladies" again, like we did so much in art school. And then I thought of drawing on found materials with ink if necessary. I had a large atlas of maps and I attended one session and tried it out. It was definitely interesting.

Corrugated Nude

Getting ready to leave for a figure drawing session this past Sunday morning, I opened the recycling bin in front of my house ...I was in need of diverse surfaces on which to draw. The materials inside were actually quite inspiring...butter packages that I imagined prying apart to draw n the inside grayish-brown cardboard surface that would be such a nice geometric yet fairly rectangular shape. Then there were lots of cereal boxes; I wondered if I would decide to draw in ink on the outside or again try working on the more uniform surface inside. I already had some materials gathered in my studio. I collected it all into a portfolio and went off to the session.

I brought regular white drawing paper too, but you know what? I did not use it. It was really exciting and interesting and rewarding to draw on all the found surfaces. I started out with 1 minute gesture drawings on data pages from the large atlas that I am slowly pulling apart...I have used the pages for folding home-made berry cartons, and drawing on maps. Then a five minute drawing on a map followed by another 5 minute drawing inside an Annual Report...This seemed like a wonderful place to secret beautiful intimate drawings of nudes....I will bring it again and work on filling the pages with drawings.

The highlight of the morning was definitely the nude on the white corrugated cardboard above. The holes that are punched through the drawing vie for attention with the tonal pencil drawing of a standing nude woman. I recognized immediately that this was very successful.

Next week, we will have a male model..I will have to decide  if he belongs in the Annual report or should it be all women. I lean towards all women. A naked man has a different relationship to all those stocks and bonds I think.

Principle Gesture