After running a three-day life drawing as a means of supporting skills development for myself and others, a few points of reflection to note. 5 people attended.
- How hard it is when in the life room to focus on a task in hand in the first hour or so. The exercises that I devised for getting your eye in helped. The best of which for my own drawing was drawing with straight lines only, while others produced beautiful matisse-like drawings using on CMI and Ss (each can be flattened). I need to build up a store of such exercises to use when organising life drawing.
- The life room context feels quite pressured – a sense of how your ‘performing’ difficult to shake off, with the inevitable sense of comparison with others. This in line with the people management aspect of the organisation.
- I devised a method for the longer poses to place emphasis on storytelling and composition. Using movie stills from mainly Film Noir – the aim of which use these as a reference for a ‘stage setting’ guiding the positioning of models and providing a light scheme in lieu of interesting shapes and lighting on the studio. These proxemics can then be coopted to drawing the figure in life room; moving her around to occupy the approoximate location of the figures in the image. Feedback was that this really helped to build story and structure into the process and locating the figure in a context. I would like to develop this process at future sessions using a projector as part of the mise-en-scene. The model could be placed in front of the projection and in addition various images can be used to create a composite image.
- What I learned is that I need to go into the life room with a clear aim and strategy, or else I just flounder around.
- I need to practice and prepare by concentrating on a) modelling and structure of human form, b) mark makind and texture. Otherwise I just feel like I’ve not made the most of the life opportunity.
Add in examples of the move mise en scene _ TBC
Tanya Krzywinska Art Blog 