Fulfillment 1

Every so often I experience a satisfying and (I must admit) a rewarding sense of achievement. Last evening with Penny the model was one such occasion.  I have drawn Penny, and so have come to know Penny as a real friend, over about eight years or so. Each time, I engage with her not just as a model. I have written, in previous postings, about this amazing relationship that can emerge between model and artist, when a shared and participative engagement produces something special.
This may not be a top quality work of art, but in its making I believe I have celebrated Penny's unique character. The shapes of her thighs, the fullness of her bum, which then engages with the twist of her spine, these are all parts of the theatre of her pose.
The composition was started with the legs and feet in a 'line drawing'. This is what attracted me to start with. I then realised that I could not leave this drawing without bringing in, acknowledging,  and celebrating her buttocks and the body twist. This focus then became a preoccupation, to which I introduced my tinted charcoal tonal mark-making.

Skeleton to the rescue!

One of those, but glad to say infrequent, events when the model does not appear. A frantic phone call to another model, Paul the gardener, resulted in him putting his chainsaw away and legging it in to Stroud to arrive in the studio to give us two hours up in the ropes. In the meantime, the ever inventive Paul Fowler invited his skeleton to pose for us. This he did, then when Paul the model arrived he joined the skeleton to do a duet. After which we had Paul the model to ourselves.

John again.

Two postings ago I talked of John the model and his contribution to the doubts I was having about my life-drawing journey. Thanks to his insight and words of wisdom I am now fully recovered, and back travelling.
Here are my drawings of John from last Monday evening. Claudia obtained a tug-of-war rope which John did various things with.

Is it a myth? Is he a legend? Now, the revelation! Two-pencil-bob is a reality.

My postings since about October 2012 have revealed and discussed my two-handed-drawing. Yes I do use both hands, making marks simultaneously.  You will see here that currently this involves my graphite pencils being held at their ends so making them a true extension of my fingers at the extremities of my arms. I stand at my easel moving back and forth engaging my body and my mind in a kinetic process. In this very spatial and mobile activity I assume that both sides of my brain are called upon. If this is happening then from the left side I bring into play my 'logical, sequential, rational, analytical, objective , and looking at the parts' approach, and from the right side my 'random, intuitive, holistic, synthesizing, subjective, looking at wholes' approach.

Here she is again

Just come across a painting which has a figure who I am pleased to note gesturally resembles my middle drawing of Sally from April 26th 2016.  This is from Hermaphroditos and Salmacis by the Flemish artist Bartholomaus Spranger, 1880/82.

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

Last evening at life-drawing in Monmouth John the model gave me his update on my blog postings. He regularly takes a look, and commented on the doubts I had intimated by the heading in my latest posting. In fact I had written quite a full description of the 'period of doubt' I had been experiencing. Unfortunately, as I was completing the posting I inadvertently deleted the text. So I just left the heading with my latest drawings posted, and went to bed. What is the doubt in question? It has occurred before. Not very often. But when it does the essence of it is this: 'I've created something new, then I tend to repeat it, because I know it works, and next time it does work, but this inhibits my usual and continually evolving experimental process'. In fact, Paul Fowler my mentor at 'extreme poses' pointed this out to me last Thursday after he had observed a repetition (the two relevant drawings are included in my last posting and both started with a diagonal line being placed on the paper followed by me drawing the two parts of the pose which attracted me on either side of this line). Paul and I had a lengthy discussion around this recurring phenomena,  which both he and I had been conscious of before but had not shared a discussion about it.
Later that evening I became very upset, depressed and somewhat fell into a state of disillusion. How could I start up again? How was change to be initiated?
I looked back through my blog which is my life-drawing diary. Yes, this state had arisen before. And then in my note-book I came across the quote (sorry, I've misplaced the author's name) which I have used as the heading above. So the outcome of this refective moment is that 'I have come a long way, I have experienced significant change, I have been sensitive to the challenges set me by the ever changing set of variables at each life-drawing session and with each pose'. And consequently future change is almost inevitable. So that's OK then! So why have I Iincluded these two drawings below? 

The first I down loaded from the blog of my life-drawing friend John Meredith. He includes it in a section of works of famous artists and others which he values for various reasons. This is an early drawing of mine in charcoal on an A1 220gsm white cartridge paper. It is of a male model and I've always celebrated my ability to create a somewhat classical compostion and drawing style. I recall it was one of my very first encounters with expressing the anotomical geography of the human form. I also recall the battle with the proportion, value and definition of the right arm and with the relative scale and possible exaggeration of the feet. This drawing holds for ever where I was some six or so years ago.

The second is an early engagement with morphism, although I didn't address this form of drawing in this way at the time. A very different mark-making technique to the other drawing. This is an early two-handed two-pencil drawing, so from late 2012. I include this as the model is John whose comment on my blog opened this posting. Simultaneous drawing with both hands has now become my way of drawing, but no longer the fine lined squiggle marks of two wood-pencil HB's. This has been replaced by the 3-layered graphite pencil marks utiliding the light H&2H's through to the middle 2&3B's through to the 7&8B's. Again this is a significant drawing saying a lot about what I was thinking and how I was experimenting with my mark-making at that time.

Conclusion: all upset, depression and disillusion vanished until the next time. But I believe it must be possible to sense when this psychological state is approaching and take action. The doubt is that because so much of life-drawing is about being immersed in 'process' and that so much of this process takes place with me as 'participant' it is not advised to be 'the participant' and 'the participant observer' at the same time. As participant I am the performer, so I take comfort in my understanding that the essence of 'performance art' is in challenging conventions of traditional forms of visual art such as painting and drawing. So 'process art' and 'performance art' will be the subjects of my next round of enquiry, and quite possibly my upcoming agent of change. Watch this space! 

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Do I keep going? OR Time for a change?