All images are A3, charcoal or graphite on paper or newsprint 2014-15
There’s something about life drawing that seems to connect you to the heart of mark-making. Perhaps it’s the intensity of the looking, the unusual connection between the model and the person drawing or the particular challenges in interpreting the human body in graphite and charcoal. I searched for years to find a good life-drawing class locally, and finally found one taught by the excellent Ed Cooper. These are a selection from last term’s sessions.
There are some that prefer not to have the model in the room, however. Jenny Saville, surely one of the most impressive figurative painters working today, finds it distracting to have a model present. Yet I’d be pushed to think of anyone who can draw and paint the human body better. The Times’ art critic, Waldemar Januszczak, has written ‘Saville is the best painter of the female nipple I have seen…She gets them perfectly.’ I’m pretty sure her ambitions stretch beyond that though.
A Certain Line 
Dear Michael,
Once again, many thanks for sending me your drawings. For some reason, the first one reminds me slightly of Modigliani…
I do not know anything of the subject, of course, but it seems to me that life drawing implies the presence of a model.
I remember your mentioning to me that you were going to attend a class – I am very pleased to see the results! What did your teacher have to say about them, I wonder.
All best wishes from Hungary,
Bálint
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Thank you, Bálint, as always for your kind encouragement. As both you and Rebecca (below) see something of Modigliani in the first one, that’s fine by me! My teacher, Ed Cooper, like all good art teachers, emphasizes the importance of looking, and drawing what you see rather than what you think you see, which is both obvious yet exhilarating when you realise you’re actually doing it.
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A little Modiglianish! 🙂 Lovely.
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Figure drawing is learning to see… again and again and again.
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