'beyond the act of drawing an object'

I sense that there is beginning to emerge, within myself, a sense of ownership of my life-drawing. Here is what I mean by this:  

• I no longer feel I am drawing an object.
• I no longer feel I am a separate entity from that 'person' who I am representing on my paper.
• I no longer 'consciously' battle with issues of composition, fitting it on the paper, and proportion, and I am oblivious to any attempt to accurately portray the model.
• If a preoccupation prevails it is 'mark-making'. I feel I want to make interesting marks. And I have discovered that charcoal has no bounds. It is infinitely explorable.
• Above all I am beginning to surprise myself by creating the unplanned and the unanticipated.
• I also feel that my work is beginning to have an identity which is particular and peculiar to me, although my researches find parallels from whom I can both draw inspiration but also further my own identity through a process of comparative analysis.  

I have entitled this posting 'beyond the act of drawing an object' and have already hinted of the current transformation in my life-drawing. 

For a few days now I have been drawing with both hands, simultaneously. 

It almost seems now to be the natural way to draw. 

Making marks through my left hand has challenged the life long conventions and sensations of drawing through my (usual) right hand. When I make marks through my left hand my right hand responds to the act of mark making in a different way from the usual  [I am still attempting to understand what is happening]. But I have concluded that by using both hands my 'whole self ' has entered the life drawing process and that I have become much more emotionally/intellectually and physically/tactily involved. In other words using both hands at once I am not only utilising both sides of my body but I am bringing into the process both sides of my brain. The implications of this I will be researching soon.

All drawings in this posting are on A2 cartridge paper. I am finding a significant benefit in using the smaller A2.

So here are 9 drawings from Tuesday June 19th at Angela Palmer's class at Brockweir in the Wye Valley with the model Carol. 

    

The first three are warm-up quickies (fairly conventional, and I am not excited by them).

Then three drawings which build upon the two small 5 minute drawings from last week. I am attempting to minimise the time spent on each and concentrate on tonal contrasts. Each is drawn from a different position in the studio, and for the third I lowered my easel and sat down.

I like these very much. They seem to extract the essence of the pose, and I'm excited by the character of the mark-making

Then three more drawings of the same pose, from different positions and elevations.

For the last one above I felt a strong need to move away from charcoal (sometimes I feel I have exhausted the potential of a particular approach for the time being), and used the double pen technique with some added graphite stick to enhance the darker tonal areas.


Now to Paul Fowler's Extreme Poses at Pegasus Art in Stroud, with Dave high in the ropes. Whereas the nine drawings above were the output over the morning and afternoon sessions (6 hours with breaks) here my nine drawings were the output from the three hour morning session, with breaks and a long coffee chat.

All nine are drawn with both hands being used to make marks simultaneously. They are posted in the order they were drawn.