 |
| Quick ink drawing. |
The Life
Model’
People have
all sorts of extraordinary ideas about what takes place in a life drawing class,
when in reality a naked body is a fairly impersonal thing. Even with young unscared
ones, as the artist is totally focus on the problem of reducing the image to a series
of lines, planes, and tones. Every person is unique with or without cloths, and
even if they are very beautiful, the erotic is very much of a secondary
consideration.
Many art
students at some point in their careers will be asked to pose, often the model
has failed to show up, and the group must improvise. Some are only to happy to
undress others not so, depending on their background, but this has nothing to
do with prudishness. One of the most difficult tasks is to hold the pose as
best you can, ten to fifteen minutes may seem like an eternity let alone an
hour. Even with breaks in between to recapture the exact position proves
difficult even for experienced models. Concentration is required to stop your
mind from wandering.
One of the
great life drawing experiences I had was in Desiderius Orban”s art school above
the Ship Inn Hotel, at Circular Quay in Sydney. He was a famous Hungarian
artist who escaped central Europe in the 1930’s. Like many other Ex-European
modernists at the time, he migrated to Australia and through teaching introduced
new concepts for painting and drawing. This was never more apparent than in his
life class, were ten or fifteen second drawings were often required. He would
run up and down the room shouting faster faster. His philosophy was very much
that creativity was an instrumental thing and a subconscious response was what
true art was all about. Draw from the shoulder he would say. Naturally he had critics, but he always claimed novelty
is in itself a work of art, if it is done within the limits of a creative visual
imagination. His approach forced students to work freely and forget any inhibitions.
This was the best way to give life to your work.
Conti sketch.
No comments:
Post a Comment