Finding yourself through life-drawing

I recently enjoyed Alan Bennett's film 'The lady in the van', and I scrawled on the back of an envelope in the darkness of our local community hall the words spoken by Alex Jennings "you don't put yourself into what you write, you find yourself there". This struck a chord with me as I had for some time now been considering what my life-drawings themselves are able to reveal or tell me about myself. I just found the full quote which I include below.
However, I also think that 'you do put yourself into what you draw', and 'you put yourself into how you draw'. So this quote has initiated a further stage in my own thoughtful self-examination of myself as an artist. 

More on 'the anagram' at Extreme Poses

This morning 5 thirty minute poses. I had decided I would not be drawing the complete pose as it presented itself. I had decided I would consciously pursue my current fascination with 'the anagram is my art' (see recent discussions) I.e. my de-construction of the pose followed by my re-construction within a new spatial organisation on the paper.  The process was very straight forward. I stood viewing the pose.....I selected which parts appealed to me......I thought a bit about the composition/design of the drawing........I started the initial exploratory light markings of one, or two, or perhaps three parts.........then I was away and I entered my subconscious, meditative, natural way of drawing.........then, towards the end some conscious final marks. But its not really the end, there is no complete product, each drawing is a step in my lfe-drawing journey

Space, Time and The Nude

More hands and feet

My life-drawing friends now frequently note that I am "good at feet". Yes I do enjoy drawing feet, and hands. Perhaps because they are bizarre in form, contorted, devoid of any symmetry. Drawing them is not a direct process, it is explorative, searching. 

This drawing, as presented, has been rotated 90 degrees from its original portrait format. It also presents a process in which the pose has been de-constructed. This de-construction reflects my own subjective perception of the pose and the drawing. In other words, these are the parts of the pose I found significant, and I have brought them together in the drawing, I.e. I have re-constructed the pose in a way that emphasises, to me, the importance of these parts. Now, their importance is the part they play as clues in your attempt to re-construct the pose. Are you able to imagine the pose?. Actually, I don't mind if you can't.  I simply enjoy my own life-drawing world.

Why do we start with quickies?

I remain unconvinced of the value of the series of quick gesture poses which seem so popular at the start of most life-drawing classes. They are supposed to 'get you warmed up', to 'get your eye in', to 'get you in the mood'. I am sure they do these things, but I am usually raring to continue my life-drawing journey, to take the next steps along my own path, and for me this does not embrace the short pose. However, I do make the most of the opportunities thrown up, as evidenced by my recent 'three graces' drawings. I usually include all the poses on one paper and develop a narrative as the different poses are presented to us.
Here is my latest. There are four poses here, but in this case no narrative. The poses overlap so I have added some tone to help identify them.

Who'd be a model? Or....Bob to the rescue, but not as an electrician.

Had a rewarding evening at a new (for me) life-drawing venue in Monmouth, with a new model who was herself modelling for the first time. Then at home read up about Egon Schiele and others. Went to bed thinking 'life-drawing'. Got up really early, fed dog and cat, read some more Schiele with smatterings of Rodin, Courbet, and those who had had difficulties with their explicit portrayals of the female anatomy. Drove through the forrest to life-drawing in the Wye Valley. Greeted with the news that the model's alarm had a flat battery so she overslept, then her car had a flat battery and jump leads were needed to start from another vehicle. So, Bob, seeing as you have such an amazing head, we all have decided to ask you to sit for us for a portrait session until the model arrives in about an hour or so (I was seduced by the offer of a 'free' life-drawing session next time, and by recalling the number of requests I had received in recent times to model for portraits and head sculptures). My head is in demand, and here is an opportunity to satisfy this demand, so that I can at last get on with my life.
So, I sat! I focussed on a painting on the wall. Red silk scarf, luxuriant white hair and recently trimmed white beard, denim shirt and Himalayan Yak necklace, and all those wrinkles, bags under the eyes, and numerous other personality characteristics which many have found so attractive as to request a sitting.
Three breaks to relieve my neck pain, then after one hour I suggested we stop for coffee before the 'real' model arrived. My thanks particularly to Bryony, Kathie, Jen and Angela whose pieces I include below.
The model arrived, much to everyone's relief. A lovely pose. Back to normal......for an hour or so.........then the lights went out, the heating went off, and a sort of humming started up. Levers were tried, buttons were pressed, phone calls for help were made. Eventually we all gave up. It was lunch time. I left for home, and to write this blog. What happened in the afternoon life-drawing session I do not know.
Who'd be a model? I was a model! I have always appreciated the significance of the contribution of the model to the life-drawing process. But it is rarely without its challenges and frustrations. I am an egalitarian. The model and I are one!

Anagram and Rotation

Three parts of the pose were brought together on the paper in a portrait format.
The paper was then rotated through 90 degrees. Nothing more was added.

The model lay on her back with her legs raised on a dais.

Spaciality and the anagram

In my last posting I referred to my searches into the role of 'anagram' in life-drawing, and my readings introduced me to the dance work of Antonin Artaud. The place of anagram in dance is equally fascinating but what struck me was the similarity of issues being addressed. When I bring the parts of the pose together in a drawing, in a 'reconstituted, reconstructed order' I am also creating a new spatial organisation within which these parts perform together. Here, Antonin Artaud puts this into words:

"At last let human anatomy dance,
from above to below and from below to above,
from behind to the front and,
from the front to behind,
by the way through more from behind to behind,
than from behind to the front"

This drawing is from yesterday morning, March 10, at 'extreme poses. For me there is a multi-dimensional spatiality within and between the parts of the pose which are included in the composition the like of which I feel is descibed by Antonin Artaud.

"the anagram is the key to all my work"

The title of this posting is a quote from Hans Bellmer from his last interview given from his bed shortly before he died.
I introduced myself to, and became totally absorbed in the drawings of Hans Bellmer some years ago. But a few days ago, by chance, I came across a number of essays and critiques of his works whilst I was researching my current pre-occupation with drawing selected parts of a pose (I have described the unfolding journey into this phase of my life-drawing in recent postings).
I have sought terms to describe my approach: 'de-construction' followed by a 're-construction',  I.e. I include in a drawing those parts of a pose which fascinate me but I juxtopose them in a slightly different relationship. (I won't go into the reasons why I am doing this at the moment, there is a thesis to compose here). These two terms seemed adequate to descibe what I had been doing. But then I came across the concept of 'anagram' in the context of Bellmer's work.
Various writings had slightly differing quotes:
"the female body......is like an endless sentence that invites us to rearrange it, so that its real meaning becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams"
"the body is comparable to a sentence that invites you to disarticulate it, for the purpose of recombining its actual contents through a series of endless anagrams"
"the body is like a sentence that invites dissection in order that its true meaning may be reconstituted in an endless series of anagrams".
I hope the point is well made.
Through considering these quotes, the ideas and concepts they embody, I do believe I now have a clearer understanding of that which has been emerging in my life-drawing over recent weeks. Occasionally I can find moments in the past when I have done similar things, but the drawings from these times can be seen simply as experiments in searching for alternatives and were carried out at a quite superficial level. Now, I do feel that a deeper, more considered, and more thoughtful activity is taking place.
So, the drawings below from my last two sessions, Tuesday March 8th & Thursday March 10th, represent poses which have been 'rearranged', 'recombined', 'reconstituted', 'reconstructed' to reflect something of the artist. They say something about me.

Fingers and toes in the ropes

At 'extreme poses' on March 10th with our model Paul up in the ropes. His hand with fingers between his toes just less than a metre away from me and so an immediate compulsion to engage with this anotomical delight. I rarely include the straps/ropes of the supporting harness in my drawings but this time it seemed essential to explain what was happening. Another rare event is my introduction of tonal mark-making (using a small block of tinted charcoal which I then moved across the surface of the paper with a tissue). I rather like this extension to my range of marks.

From both ends

Last week I addressed Katie from the feet upwards, so this week I did a quick response looking from her head downwards. I lowered my easel and sat for both these drawings in order to maximise the challenge of engaging with the perspective of the pose.

Three more graces, again.

Our model Katie with three 5 minute starters at Angela Palmer's life-drawing class at Brockweir in the Wye Valley on March 8th.
Within each 5 minutes I utilise my three-layer two-handed mark-making technique on A1 220gsm cartridge paper.

A morning of diversity

Well, this is my view of what happened at Extreme Poses yesterday morning. These three drawings and the two recalled in the two previous postings each deals with a very different aspect of life-drawing. Here below:
1) There is the straightforward issue of perspective. As soon as the model sat on the podium and I saw her foot draped over the edge I just had to draw it. No compulsion to distort, no need to seek a different interpretation, no peculiar subjective perception was sensed
2) Then I just saw hands and feet extending out into space, which required a rotation of the paper through 90 degrees once the hands were in place.
3) And the final pose of the morning took my breath way. Her poise, her elegance, her serenity, this was such a beautiful presentation that I really did not want to attempt it. My somewhat recent obtuse attitudes in my art if persued here could, I felt at the time, violate the quality before me in the sense that I could not possibly do it justice. But I had another 29 minutes so I had a go. I really wanted to include the whole pose from head to foot. But like just about on every other occasion as soon as the first marks appear on the paper a powerful energy is released and one is set off in a direction one has little conscious influence over:  Intuition, subjective response, subconscious decision making, mind over mstter....... these are the terms which come to mind. Objective analytical examinations take place later. Like when I dit down and write my blog.

A compressed pose

I was taken aback when confronted with this next pose. The model, seated on a plinth, brought her limbs together and compressed herself into a tight interwoven form. Whereas over the past weeks I have been selecting parts of the pose, drawing them large and bringing them closer together, in other words I have been reducing the spaces in between the parts and recreating a kind of compressed version of the pose, here it was done for me. So how did I react. Well, my subjective perception of what I was looking at still seemed to push me into including her right shoulder twice in order to answer on the paper how I was feeling about the anotomical form arrangement before me.
I recall I had a similar experience two or so weeks ago and I also place this drawing here to compare.

Feet again

Homing in on part of the drawing in the previous posting I wanted to add that I am pleased with the clarity of my mark-making and particularly the differentiation in line of, in this case, a two layered approach. Usually I follow a three layer approach.
Also in the context of my recent fascination with rotation the feet in this position make sense.

Another rotational piece

I was attracted to the feet and arm, then rotated the paper through 90 degees and brought the remainder of the pose into the composition.

Three more graces

Another three 5 minute poses. Drawn in sequence from right to left. I like how the central figure has what Tina Turner would call 'attitude'.

March 1st reclining nude: spatial 2

Same position in relation to model as previous posting, but here I wanted to include the full length of the lower leg from foot to knee. I then started drawing the other part of the pose which attracted me, I.e. the reclined head, breasts and hands and a suggestion of the curve of her tummy. Juxtaposing these two parts created a space between and within them. So far so good. But there were other areas of the paper left as rather meaningless voids. Do I leave the drawing as it is? But this would be too easy. I thought, there is a challenge here. So, do I simply extend those parts of the pose I have already included to fill the voids? Or do I introduce other parts of the pose? I turned the drawing through 90 degrees, from portrat to landscape format, and whilst standing back and considering the potential of this move Angela Palmer came along and as we talked about my dilemma she suggested placing a second drawing of the face beyond the leg in the top right of the composition. So I went for it. And we have what is now a recurring challenge for the beholder, to work out 'What is the complete pose?' And in this case 'How many bodies do we have in the end?'
So, I'm continuing to evolve my de-constructive re-constructive theme, I'm continuing my experimentation with spatial issues, and I'm continuing my life-drawing journey steb-by-step into the unknown. The new aspect this time: I do a drawing, rotate it, a narrative is suggested by this new orientation which is then responded to in order to complete the drawing.

March 1st reclining nude: spatial 1

I positioned myself at the foot of the model so her body unrolled before me from her feet right up through to her head. Issues of perspective, advancing feet, how to deal with the distant face, etc. came to mind. The drawing is constructed in two parts. Firstly the horizontal band of two arms, hands and breasts. Then how to engage with the legs and particularly the feet. As I have many times recently brought closer together in the drawing parts of the pose which I have a particular positive feeling for I elected to home in on the knees. I knew that the leg if drawn to the scale I thought appropriate would extend far beyond the edges of the paper so I simply included both knees. So, two drawings, and lets see how they relate. In fact they relate very well and I, and others in the class, agreed that the final product appears as a whole, and not two parts which requires an effort to relate.

More on 'spatiality'

All these four drawings have been turned through 90 degrees, as a follow on from my exploration of the new spatial aspects of  perceiving and drawing the life model which I have started to describe in my previous few postings.
The original subjective perception of the pose undergoes a challenge when the drawing is looked at within a set of objective spacial transformations. I am extremely excited by the emergence of this new way of looking at my drawings as a key component of my relationship with a pose.

My life-drawing journey

"Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go, just remember how far you have come"

I don't know who the author of this quote is, but it reminded me that the other day a colleague spoke the following encouraging words to me: "Bob, you have created your own genre". Yes, I do feel a very personal ownership of my art. But maybe at times, doubts arise.