At Last, Real Life Drawing

 

7/8/21 Randy (short warm-ups)

Meeting up with USk Seattle was the art-related activity that I missed most during the worst of the pandemic. But the thing I missed second-most was life drawing – real life drawing with a living, breathing model in the same room, not on a Zoom screen. The last time I had done that was December 2019 at Drawing Jam – more than a year and a half ago – so I was excited to find out about a plein air life-drawing opportunity. An informal group meets weekly at Gas Works Park with a clothed model, and I was happy to join them last Thursday on a cool and cloudy morning.

Most of the group’s members are painters, so the format is a single long pose for the entire three-hour session. Randy, whom I have drawn many times at Gage, was our model. Without timing them, I warmed up by making a couple of sketches that I figured were the equivalent of two- and five-minute poses (above). By then, I was already bored with that pose, so I made a larger sketch of all the artists focused on Randy. (Artists are nearly as motionless as the models they are painting, so it was like having lots of models simultaneously!)

The unpaid "models"

Randy (20-min. pose)

For the first of the next two 20-minute sessions, I walked around to the opposite side to draw Randy again (at left). Finally, I moved to the back of the group, where I could include Randy with painter Beatrice’s back (below).

Initially I felt rusty, but it was so good to get back into real life drawing again that I didn’t care. I hope to join this group as often as I can while the weather holds out.

Beatrice painting Randy