Like a Double Espresso

5/4/24 1-minute poses

On the first Saturday of the month, Gage Academy offers a three-hour life-drawing session of one-minute, two-minute and five-minute poses. It’s like a double shot of espresso: If you weren’t awake when you got there, you surely will be after a round or two of poses going by so fast that they hardly count as “poses.” Our fantastic model gave us a huge variety of strong, dynamic poses that kept every minute fun and challenging.

With 5-minute p0ses, I have time to use water-soluble graphite with water.

Although I prefer shorter poses to long ones anyway, the usual short-pose sessions I have attended are no shorter than five minutes (and ramp up to 20 by the end of the session). I had been wanting to try a super-short session for a long time but always seemed to have a conflict on the first Saturday. Now that I’ve had a taste, you can bet I’ll be back for more. These sessions are especially great practice for urban sketching.

For 2-minute poses, I used the same brush pen as I did for 1-minutes, but I had time for a little shading with a waterbrush.

Shown here are just a few of the 80 or so sketches I made. I always like to compare my first one of the session to all the rest after I’ve warmed up. Below are the stick men that were the first sketches of the day!

My first two sketches of the session... a bit stiff and out of proportion, but at the rate we were going, I warmed up quickly!