Lessons from Life Drawing part 1

In which I document the shifts that occur through an art class

Thanks for following along! This will be a series of posts as I learn life lessons from an art class! Don’t forget to hit the ❤️ so I know (and Substack does!) that you’re with me…

Photo by Svetlana Pochatun on Unsplash

I’ve paid good money to stare at a naked woman, and all I can think is that I should have worn orthopedic shoes.

My lower back aches from standing in bare feet on a cement floor, and I’m probably too stiff, on a number of levels, for something like this class. Facing the model, who stands on a raised dais, I hold my pencil in the awkward grip of someone who hasn’t come to the drawing page in years. I try to look—and really see what’s before me.

This woman’s body is as different from mine as a whippet’s is from a sheepdog.

What motivates her to come to a studio and pose uncomfortably for hours with people staring at her nakedness?

I can’t think of any amount of money that I would do that for, and I wonder if she’s brave, exhibitionistic, or both. Maybe I’ll be able to find out on a break.

“One-minute poses,” the master says. He’s a classically trained artist from Europe and exacting with his lessons; his piercing eyes and leonine white hair give him a slightly mad and terrifying aspect. I dare not slack off.

The model stretches out slim, tattooed arms in a dramatic gesture. She’s tattooed all over, and her skin takes on the quality of fabric, marked with patterns and folded like drapery.

All around me, diligent instruments scratch the paper. I make a few awkward motions with my pencil, clumsy and too big, compelled to try because I’m supposed to.

And then… the light’s hitting her in a really interesting way.

I want to capture that place between elbow and hand, the gilded top of her ear. Her stomach has an interesting guitar-shape, the ribs moving gently, the bones pulsing against the skin like watching a gecko breathe, backlit on a window.

“Keep your eye moving across the whole.” The master appears behind me, taking my pencil from my hand and making tiny flicking gestures across my paper. He conjures her likeness in a handful of marks, an immediate and ghostly djinn, while my stilted rendering looks like a chicken wing.

“See the shapes. Don’t interpret, just record them. Triangles, rectangles, ovoids. See the negative space as much as the positive,” the master exhorts.

His words are gibberish. I feel some essential shift in perception is needed, and I can’t make it. Instead, I see impossibly difficult foreshortening perspectives, difficult extensions, and twisted angles.

Body parts, and not the whole.

The sixty-second poses seem to go on forever, a string of weighted minutes like a dive belt pulling me under.

Moving my pencil is pushing lead against gravity: utter vanity, a wasted effort that only documents my ineptitude as I barely begin to situate the model on the paper, before her pose changes.

I struggle on, hating my incompetence and considering, as I grapple, what lengths I normally go to avoid these feelings.

Yet here I am, in front of a great expanse of paper, trying to capture what I see.

As time unspools, a blissful lack of thinking eventually takes over. My mind becomes white buzzing silence, just an occasional phrase bubbling up that I hope I remember: “Cloudy velvet afternoon light.”

“Skin canvas stretched over hard and soft organic structures is defined as a body.”

“Toes are like fingers, only shorter.”

“The three darkest shadows on the body are between the jaw and collarbone, under the armpit, and between the legs.”

No music accompanies this seemingly endless stretch of effort. The soundtrack of the room includes the sough of wind in the kukui nut trees outside, the random coo of an occasional dove or squawk of a mynah bird, the rustling of pencils, a sigh of frustration, the murmured voice of the master correcting.

I improve during the two-minute poses, beginning to loosen up and be less afraid, and I get better still at the three minutes—the forms begin to resemble a human.

I degenerate again at the four-and five-minute poses.

Finally, I produce a ghostly, attenuated seven-minute drawing that looks like heat shimmer on a desert road surrounding a ghost figure. Thus concludes three hours of my life on a Thursday.

the best I could do

Meanwhile, I have come to know the model very well, without exchanging a word, by the end of class. As with any highly-studied object, familiarity breeds attachment, and the tattooed woman’s almost beloved as a Velveteen Rabbit by the end of class.

Judgy, intimidated thoughts on her body and its markings have disappeared. I believe I know why she’s doing this, now: her body is her art, and she’s sharing it with us.

Every muscle is clearly defined, a series of ripples, curves and angles, emphasized in interesting ways by the tattoos. She probably does something like yoga because she’s flexible and toned, but not hard like a runner or a weightlifter.

During the breaks, the model puts on a robe and sits quietly, not so much as looking at her phone; just staring into the middle distance. Meditating.

She’s allowed us to treat her as a prop, as objectified as one of the busts lining the room. But I don’t like that we’ve done that. During one of the breaks, I thank her for the effort that makes her tremble with strain as she holds difficult, interesting poses. She smiles and says, “no problem.”

Even so, I want to draw her better so that her sacrifice is worthwhile. But I’m not capable of it. At the end of class, I stuff the trash can with my fractured sketches. I feel guilty about wasting the model’s effort and physically throwing away paper and time. I’m dogged by shame at my ineptitude—and yet, as I push the evidence down and away into the rubbish, it occurs to me that voluntarily putting myself in a position of inadequacy and overcoming that, could be a noble thing. Worth doing for the character development alone.

Afterward I get in my car after saying goodbye to the model and the master.

I’m wrung out, and my lower back is tight with strain. But I’m also filled up in a new way. Really looking at someone so carefully, for so long, has changed me. It’s laden with insight I don’t yet understand but want to.

The radio is usually on as I drive, helping to drown out the timpani of my busy thoughts. But today, the soft white static I achieved in class continues. I notice light sifting over my hands on the steering wheel like gold dust, illuminating triangles, ovoids, rectangles and spheres.