Last night I went to a life drawing class taught by Jon Imber and sponsored by the OFA. [Images of Imber's work can be found online at the Nielsen Gallery]
Back in the day (ok, really more like 4 years ago), I went to life-drawing classes regularly; spending hours drawing from a model was a pretty typical weeknight or weekend activity.
Clearly, that has changed somewhat, but it was still pretty nice to get to play with charcoal again. There were about 10 of us yesterday, of all different ranges and abilities. I went with my friend Ari who, having never taken a life-drawing class before, was pretty happy that the first class wouldn’t involve a nude model, even if it is harder to draw a clothed figure.
In the coming weeks, the class will follow a traditional life-drawing format- quick warm up sketches of a nude model followed by longer poses. Jon’s style of teaching is fairly mellow; he mainly circulated the room as we drew and offered individual comments or suggestions. At times, we all showed one another what we were working on or struggling with.
A 3 hour drawing class may sound fairly long for the uninitiated (or like an impossible dream for those of us with mountains of reading to do), but the time passes fairly quickly. If anything, its actually a very relaxing experience, one that compels you to look, focus, and then move your hands according to what you see. I’m always amazed, when I come out of a drawing class, at how intensely I was able to focus while sketching– you can literally feel your brain expanding to take in the macro level again, like a camera suddenly zooming out to expand its frame. For 3 hours, you’re staring at arms and legs and torsos so intently that they stop being arms and legs and torsos, and become something entirely different. Sometimes the lines and shapes come out perfectly. Sometimes they’re a disaster. And sometimes, in smudging out the disasters, you end up with something that still says ‘arm’ or ‘leg’ or ‘torso’ in its own imperfect way.
