Shauna

1/18/18 1-minute poses

I recently read the book, Undressed Art – Why We Draw, by Peter Steinhart. While it is mainly about art and the human compulsion to draw, it is also about the relationship between the artist and the life drawing model. Although it’s mostly unspoken, a certain level of communication goes on between the model, who is willing to take off his or her clothes for a roomful of people, and the artists who show up to draw this naked person. 

Unless you count Drawing Jam in December, yesterday was the first time I had been to a life-drawing session at Gage in more than six months. Feeling very stiff and rusty, I thought about what I’d read in Steinhart’s book and was very grateful for Shauna, our model that day. One of my favorite Gage models, she has an open expressiveness with her poses that somehow makes it easier to engage with her with my pen or pencil. She has a delightful spontaneity – or makes it seem she does – even as she must be completely in control to hold dynamic poses for up to 20 minutes. During the one-minute poses, the music we were listening to changed to the theme song from “Rocky,” and she put up her dukes! Perhaps it was a well-rehearsed pose that she’d done before, but I felt entertained. She also moved with such fluidity that it helped me past my own creakiness.

1/18/18 2-minute poses

1/18/18 5-minute poses