Just to show my fascination with challenging my own perception of what I'm presented with. The 'advancing foot' and 'foreshortening' were two immediately attractive issues to explore. But also there was the journey up thro' the pose, stopping every so often to highlight points of interest and attraction, but without drawing the pose as a whole.
I've regularly attempted explorations of a pose which challenge my initial perception of what I am presented with. This is sometimes done to relieve the boredom of being presented with a 'traditional classical' seated or standing pose. But more frequently it is a particular aspect or part(s) of a pose which I want to explore. Here are three very recent examples of this approach.
I am finding it very difficult to put this aspect of my art into words. Particularly to articulate it on my blog. You will know that usually I have a go to communicate my thoughts and my analysis. But I do feel that I am beginning to arrive at something special, and particular, during my past few life-drawing sessions.
I have begun to focus on 2, 3 or 4 parts of the pose which I am attracted to. I draw these on my paper more or less in the relationship they have in the pose. But I draw them each large, and mostly they are each closer together on the drawing than they are in the pose. Yet, there is a space 'within' these parts which I have created. Normally, it would be a drawing of the rest of the pose. But I have not drawn this rest of the pose. Paul Fowler has named this space 'counterbalance'. And I loved this idea. I saw immediately what he meant by this term of 'counterbalance'. It allows the parts which I have a feeling for, and therfore have been attracted to draw, to have a context, to have a reason for being included. It allows the beholder, or perhaps better put, it challenges the beholder to construct for themselves the pose.
So lets see if this works for you!
This approach, issue, way of doing a life-drawing, I feel has loads of potential for me. I am so very excited by it.
I am pleased with the way I have responded to the twist and turn of the body in these two poses.
I explore the pose on the A1 220gsm white cartridge paper with a graphite pencil in each hand. Firstly, the initial exploration using hard graphite, 2H and H. Then a focus on key lines and forms with a 2B and 3B, and finally I hold 8B and 9B and focus in on the significant highlights of interest. Adopting this 3 stage layered strategy of mark-making, and forgetting about it as 'technique', I find frees me to get on and become 'emotionally' involved in expressing my 'feeling'.
I recall that inspiring quote from Pavlova: "First master technique, then forget it. For without heart, there can be no art".
Looking back over my life-drawing journey I frequently come across examples in which I have brought forward part of the pose, usually a foot. This arises from the poses at 'Extreme Poses' in Stroud where the model climbs into a harness suspended from the ceiling and often in a horizontal laying position has their projected foot within perhaps half a metre from my easel, with the rest of the body extending off into the distance.
I have frequently transferred this approach to the more conventional life-drawing situations, and have been fascinated by the explorations and experimentations which I then engage with.
