Sources and realisations.

 I continue to be fascinated with, and by,  my art.

Not sure why, but the other day I compiled a number of connections, which seem to make sense to me, about possible early foundations to the journey I have so far made.

In the summer of 1961 I went on what was to be the first of my European Grand Tours. With my mates, Geoffrey Randell and George Sowden, at the end of our First Year at Cheltenham School of Architecture, we set off in a short wheel based land rover, armed with a copy of Bannister Fletcher's 'History of European Architecture on the Comparative Method' to visit as many of the great pieces of architecture as possible. Through Germany, France, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy and Spain we indulged ourselves in the ancient, classical and the modern. 

We drove in to Rome and halted at the foot of the grand steps up to the main facade of the basilica of St Peters. A short preamble took us into The Vatican and in to the Sistene Chapel. Can't recall any one else in the place. I looked up and then laid myself, on my back, on the floor in the middle of this huge overpowering space......... Figures came towards me....exaggerated perspectives......anatomical extravagance..........

Next here is a very early life drawing of mine. The model is Robin, who is a ceramicist and designer of tiled displays in peoples kitchens and gardens. She spent the summer months in Crete and when she posed for us at Paul Fowler's Extreme Poses she became a real favourite and a truly inspirational model. In this drawing I used charcoal applied and worked on clear gesso treated cartridge paper.

Next I turn to Albrecht Durer whose draughtsmanship and attention to anotomical detail I have found truly inspirational..

People who comment on my work frequently say something like "You are good at hands and feet". Yes, I am. But this attention to the extremities has come about because I no longer am interested in addressing the complete whole pose. The dangling hand, and the contorted toes fascinateme. 

However much I place attention on the hand, or the foot, it is always the context which I am aware of and a reference to this, and acknowledgement of it, which enters in some way into my compositions. 

If we look for a moment at the immediate context here we see an extraordinary anatomical exaggeration: take a close look at the huge size and length of the left thigh and leg.......amazing! 

Via the paintings and drawings of Michaelangelo I have been introduced to 'anatomical complexity', 'bold foreshortening' and ''daring poses'

Finally, in this brief journey into the roots of my art, I am going back to my art at school. In the sixth form I spent more time in the art room than I should have done to the detriment of my performance in mathematics. It was Bill Howells, my art master, who suggested to me that my figurative work resembled the exaggerated elongation of El Greco's figures. I pursued this introduction to the paintings of Domenikos Theotokopoulis, bought books on his works, and sought his paintings in art galleries whenever I could.

So, from these early engagements with Michaelangelo and El Greco I can source my pre-occupations with:

exaggeration        expressive

spatiality               anatomy

And with my engagement with Durer I can source my love of 'the line' .

My minimalist linearity more recently owes influences from such artists as Klimpt, Schiele, Matisse, Bellmer, and a few others. 

I will add that I have always loved drawing, and am reminded of its value by Henri Matisse : "When you draw you look much more intensely at something"

And when life-drawing:

My model

The Pose

She or He

Starts an immediate dialogue

provokes an instant response.

I respond

by

exploring visually

then emotionally

then kinesthetically.

I commence,

I engage,

I enter.

A sequence of arrival

A balance of form.

Lines: "No room for them to go anywhere else" (Paul Fowler)

I walk through space with my drawing

My journey evolves. 

                                            From a recent entry in my note book.

Also:

I don't care if I don't draw well

I just love drawing.

I don't care if I don't draw correctly the human body,

Drawing the human body is fundamental.

In this action we touch the basis of art,

and 

we reach into the very self.

                                           Also from my note book.

Paul's 'Language of Drawing' Workshop on July 21st, 2022

Following a really enjoyable workshop Paul Fowler sent out the following message:  

"Thank you all for making the day successful, The language of drawing was my opener to a series of workshops that I have been planning for some time. 

The workshop did work and supports the idea that openly encouraging discussion

and experimentation with your individual drawing processes can open up new and existing developments within the safe space of the life drawing room. With insights into how you encourage your drawing to grow and  develop.

I will of course continue with extreme poses life drawing on a Wednesday and a Thursday morning. And will be announcing a new workshop shortle

This is the list of questions from the workshop, just in case you didn't get them all down.

My aim is to question your perception of how you see or judge your drawings..

What do you believe is a good drawing?

Can you be challenged?  

Is communication your goal? 

Do You think your judgment is the same as others? 

Is praise important? 

Should you start a drawing the same way each time?  

Superimposing your emotions. See you soon Paul."

In between poses by Paul Boon our model for the day a series of dialogues and discussions took place. We worked in pairs with our observations and comments between each pair were listened to and shared by the group as a whole. At other times throughout the day we intermingled and talked over in quite some depth what we had been experiencing and what breakthroughs were taking place in each of our life-drawing journeys. A real sense of a community of life-drawing artists was enhanced. 

Immediately following the workshop I sent the following to Paul:

Hi Paul

Not yet had time to start to reflect on today's workshop. But I do feel it was very worthwhile. It is always extremely beneficial to get insights into how others perceive and understand their own approach and process. This helps to more fully question and understand, by comparison, one's own approach. However, perhaps my immediate thought is that such an event as you put together today strengthens the bonds within the community of life-drawers, and indicates to its members that it is possible to talk together, share experience, gain insights into other approaches, and having once witnessed the value of this then the next time they find themselves in a life-drawing studio then dialogue and discussion will more naturally flow. The sense of a communal  shared endeavour, enquiry and journey is difficult to create, but you have clearly achieved this. 

So, I can now confirm I have booked myself in on Thursday mornings up until Christmas, and look forward to participating in, and being part of your community of life-drawers. 

Love and best wishes,

until August 25th

Bob

Here are my drawings from the day:

We are asked to represent the essence of the pose: my response is, 'the box is supported by the hand, the elbow sits on the knee, the foot is on the plinth' This is weight being transferred via gravity.

Then come three of my typical deconstructivist creations........

This is quite different to my usual response. Not sure what to make of it.

All poses during the day required Paul Boon, our model, to relate tot the suspended box. Here, right at the end of the day, and very quickly, I captured him as 'Atlas supporting the world'

This was a bizarre exercise: eyes closed, feeling our face with one hand, drawing what we felt with the other hand. Here are three drawings. two with my dominant hand, and a third with my left hand, Superimposed on these is a response to Paul Boon up in the ropes. You should be able to detect the ropes, an outline of his buttocks, and a horizontal lower leg and foot. Not at all sure why we were asked to place these two together.

My refined line

My line has become more confident. 

It has jettisoned uncertainty.

It responds to the essence of the pose.

In these latest of my life-drawings, through the quality of my line, I celebrate my art as I respond to the beauty of the female body enhanced by an intimate and shared dialogue.

The dialogue here is with Shelley and Jacquie.

A rare Saturday session.

 I am at Tony Tribe's third Saturday in Llanbedr. We start at 10.00am and finish at 3.00pm with a break for lunch. There are only six of us drawing. So the chance to move my easel about during a pose and so engage with my cubism. Jacquie our model is slightly elevated on a stage. I know her well, so there is an immediate dialogue in place and I feel I can engage with her without any hesitation. Marks appear on my paper as though I had not been absent from her presence.

I recall this was a ten minute standing pose which seemed to stop after about five minutes. My drawing travelled up and down her left profile, then I started to introduce her right side including her hand on the chair. Then time was up.

This is the first of three drawings which deal with the same issues and incorporate, more or less, the same selected parts of the pose. I didn't enjoy this first drawing, I struggled with the hand, and I recall I was unhappy with how the various parts related to each other.

I didn't actually intend to attempt to correct or improve upon that which I had felt unhappy about in the previous drawing. But there was something about the battle I had encountered in the previous drawing which encouraged me to have another go. Not sure what it was that I wanted to achieve but whatever I was after ithad not worked out. This time it did, but there was still a level of greater complexity which I felt could be reached. More overlap, greater superimpositioning, increased transparency, and an increased challenge to the beholder to unravel what was being presented to them.

The outcome: there is a lot going on here.

Then, just like on June 16th 'A different kind of Thursday morning.......' The final pose I felt could not be deconstructed, it was so beautiful, so out came the graphite pencils, the willow charcoal caressed with the finger, and together with a fine-liner pen in  each hand, I went for the dynamics inherent in the pose.

June 23rd: Amy - performance artist

 On June 2nd we had Amy for the first time performing in the ropes. Here she is again. So not the usual nude model but a fascinating alternative. Don't think I respond any differently.

A different kind of Thursday morning...........

I had not anticipated anything different to that which usually happens to me at Paul Fowler's 'Extreme Poses' over in Stroud, as I drove over the old Severn Bridge and made my way at a gentle 60 mph up the M5 and then into Stroud. I know that on each visit some aspect of my life-drawing will emerge which we have not seen before. But only occasionally do we witness a radical change. Any change or development is evolutionary but more importantly imperceptible to the eye of most beholders. But thankfully Paul himself will see any change and will help me to be a witness to it and to understand it.

Perhaps today we are seeing something special. Certainly, we have 5 very different responses to each other. Five different 30 minute responses. My state of mind was special: free, relaxed, open, not challenged. This I strongly feel is an outcome of two celebrations which have taken place over the past few days. Firstly, my 80th birthday was celebrated with fifty guests and a hogroast on my hillfort in glorious sunshine. Secondly a group of school friends who entered Chipping Campden Grammar School in north Gloucestershire in 1953 and left it in 1960, and who have been meeting annually for the past ten or so years got together for a weekend to also celebrate their 80th birthdays. The outcome of these two events, and particularly as I enter my ninth decade, is a period of reflection and perhaps a look at what is important in life [add to this moment the changes which have taken place thro' events of the past two and a half years in which Covid isolation and withdrawal has generated a different way of life and a different way of thinking]. I believe I am now starting to re-orientate my life and to focus on the essentials. One of these essentials is my life-drawing. This will continue and so will grow. 

So what happened in my drawing this morning? Let me start with an additional, and for me an unplanned bonus, which was when the model entered the studio: it was Shelley. Paul knows how fully I respond to her poses. And this morning she inspired. She always does. Shelley projects herself. She initiates the dialogue. All I have to do is just to start drawing.

Straight into, what is for me, a fairly conventional response. The underside of the right foot was directly in front of me less than a metre away. Close by, the toes of the other foot peeped from behind a strap. The enticing forms of her buttocks appeared across the paper, superimposed upon the feet but with simpler singular lines and introduced at a different scale. I then noticed the hands clasping a strap and I recall I felt they should enter the composition in a cluster with the feet.

Paul felt this was the most sensitive of this morning's responses. He said this could be no other model than Shelley. He said that this is you, drawing Shelley, 'cause you respond to Shelley. There are three parts of the pose I have elected to draw. This is not what I decided at the start. Far from it. My process, usually now, is that I go straight for the part of the pose which I first see and am attracted to. Here it is the large shape of the thigh, together with the knee and calf, and then the curves of the bottom with the supporting straps. The foot that came towards me then went in, but I selected this 'cause I loved the way the toes extended over the edge of the supporting plinth. The same line of the edge of the plinth went in at a lower level, and at the last moment, to make sense of how the bottom was being supported by straps and therefor hovering over the plinth. Whilst all this was taking place I knew I would be including the breast, and me looking upwards, up the side of the face. So in this went with the accompanying shoulder and arm. This was a carefree and risky addition to the composition, but I believe that I had every confidence that it would work. So what we are now looking at is my selection of the essential anatomical characteristic parts of the pose, put together to create my own form, and which I presume says something about my perceptual responses to the pose and the model before me.

The 3rd pose before coffee break. Right before my eyes I witnessed a form so beautiful, that I instantly knew I must not deconstruct it. I must not violate it's beauty. I have to approach this drawing differently. My regular tool, I immediately knew was not appropriate. The classic vertical structural path of chin supported by hand, the elbow on the knee, the weight down the leg on to the plinth, had to be captured. The angles of the legs and the continued triangulations of the arm and the slopes of the two shoulders, together with the advancing feet powerfully coming towards me, all fundamental to the pose, had to be respected. And my tool, yes, had to change. There is sculpture, there is tone, there is a dynamic to the form. So out came the 4B graphite pencils, one in each hand, out came the willow charcoal caressed with the finger, and then to complete my excitement about what was happening with my mark-making I then picked up two fine-liner pens and explored a bit of detail. Graphite pencil, charcoal, fine-liner pen then were used over and over again to explore and emphasise. I believe Shelley was fully aware of what she was presenting me with, I believe she knew I would love it.

Whereas the first three drawings came from within me, and although I have given a description of the process of making the drawings, I firmly believe that what appears on the paper is much more an outcome of a subconscious, intuitive, and meditative process than a considered one. And with this approach I am always interested and at times quite anxious to stand back after the 30 minutes of the pose to see what has appeared on the paper. However with this 4th drawing of the morning we have a much more, what I might describe as, an academic approach. Here I have started with a diagonal of the outline, or profile, of one side of the body. I evaluated this and liked it. I then decided to place alongside this the same profile but seen from moving my easel 2 to 3 feet to the left. I then included the back profile (on the left of the drawing) and then moved my easel back to the original position and drew the first profile but at a different scale and including the knee (at the lower right of the drawing). The result, an overall form within which other compositions take place. I am also conscious of a play of breasts, and a play of repeats of the groin area. So it is a serious drawing with some dancing parts.

I immediately went for the chin supported on the hand. Then, as I was attracted by the hanging breast down on to the folds of the tummy, I was reminded of my exhibition drawing [Paul the gardener holding his head in his hand which then morphed with a foot on the edge of a plinth] so I morphed the hand with the breast. I recall I wanted to stop there. But only 10 minutes of the 30 minutes of the pose had elapsed. Should I start a new drawing? No! Let's gamble, and continue, and see what happens. I had a feeling I would like to include the profile of the back in order to create an overall form and composition on the paper, but elected to next include that part of the pose related to the right of the breast and tummy, i.e. the thigh and arm. Then it was obvious to me how to include the curve of the profile of the back leading down to the bottom sitting on the plinth. I quite like to include the straight geometries of the plinth as a contrast to the organic forms of the body. But also, of course, the inclusion of the plinth is just as essential as the inclusion of straps to explain the pose (sometimes). So the essence of this drawing is 'morphism' and 'different scales'.

When a solid is also space

She is sitting sideways on a steel tubular chair with a plywood seat and a plywood triangular shaped backrest. I am looking at her left side and her left arm is placed along the top of the backrest with her hand dangling over the end. I then draw in the profile line of her back from shoulder down to her bottom on a cushion on the seat. I just had to introduce her face as I looked up to it (her chair is up on a plinth and I am seated at my easel). I did not think at the time that placing her face in that position in the composition would suggest she was looking into a space. 

One edge of a strap is represented by a single line to the left of which is drawn those parts of the pose which are to the left of the strap which I can see from my position. I then, but not sure why, introduced the outline profile of the back. Next I was attracted to the foot but as I started to draw it I deliberately avoided going outside the framework set up by the line of the strap and the back profile. So this foot appeared to exist within a space, which I then gave emphasis to by dangling the hand within it and also getting the face to just peep into it.

A seated pose seen from the rear to start with. The outline profiles of the left side (hand on thigh) and the right side of the pose went in at the start but were brought together. I have done this quite a number of times so had confidence something would come of it. Where I was placed in the studio gave me the option of moving my position during the pose itself (without inconveniencing anyone). As a result of this I was able to follow my cubist approach (of looking at parts of the pose from more than one position simultaneously) and so the left foot is included as viewed from two positions, as is the head. When I moved to my right the other hand on his knee came into view. Finally, and with a few minutes remaining I became aware for the first time of the other foot, and as this had such an amazing character I just  had to draw it. But where to place it? There was only one possible place, and it just fitted in. So, in the end, we have a solid (the back of the model), which has a number of other parts of the pose attached to it, which I believe then gives emphasis to and further suggests 'a space' but then the back becomes a space by virtue of the face looking into it.