It’s been a long time since I’ve been at art school, so I was a bit hesitant to put a mark to paper this week in Life Drawing. It turns out I had nothing to worry about, because my new teacher is an absolute champion, and the energy in the room was so wholehearted. The introduction to this week’s course was more of a discussion about what it is to be human than anything else. I think we’re going to get along just fine.

We have to keep a journal for the course, so I’ll turn back to blogging as I have with previous courses, as it serves to also keep family and friends up to date with what I’m up to. It’s a lot easier to give people a URL than to recount a semester’s worth of work.

We worked with a life model today, both clothed and unclothed. Since we are used to drawing nudes, clothing was new for me. We were told in first year that clothing is harder to draw than skin, which is why we began with nudes, but after today, I’m not convinced. Clothing was pretty fun.

Homework was to check out two artists, as well as transcribe our drawings from class 6 times on to postcard size grounds. I’ve done 2 of those so far, and am taking a break to reflect and regenerate here.

As for the artists, Kara Walker and Cherry Hood. Kara is a 49 year old American artist who produces silhouetted figures as large cut-outs. She explores race, gender and violence issues through her work. Cherry is a 59 year old Australian artist who works at a large scale from photographs, producing portraits. Her work treads a line between drawing and painting, responding to and celebrating the nature of watery marks.

Two very different artists from different backgrounds. Our teacher is going to drop some different names each week for us to explore. Neither of the above artists resonate with me particularly, but I enjoyed adding some new dimension to my understanding of life drawing.

Here’s to the year ahead!