Figure drawing sessions... and reflections...



(Sorry for the bad photographic quality of these drawings. The paper is off white, not grey as shown.
The poses in these sessions are unknown. We don't know how long each sitting is for, when drawing them, which is supposed to avoid any calculating or slowing down. I've noticed I slow down even so and that I'm more active if I know it's a short pose. Here I missed her feet for example, as pose ended, but this doesn't disturb me here...)

Well, well, I've been attending a weekly figure drawing session since the autumn, with a teacher. I might have mentioned that before. A "non academic" teacher, if I could call him so (I would say it's the "french way" of teaching). I have trouble finding my own path, listen to what ever advices he gives can be confusing. Advices we should forget about while drawing, to be able to concentrate 200% on our impressions and drawing those. Maybe I should just forget everything I've learned, to see what happens then....? Scary! It will feel like starting from the beginning! Why is that so scary? Maybe because it took so much efforts to get anywhere at all, that it creates fear of loosing the spot where we are at.
The problem in this kind of course is that it looks like everybody will end up doing the same thing. The same kind of drawing. They are all trying to find there own "style", which I think is a big error, specially if you try to please the teacher. They're all influenced by him. Our personality comes without searching for it, it comes with hard work and our own experiences, in my opinion.
I don't want to adhere to any fashionable tendency. Some "today fashion" the teachers keep telling everybody to believe in, just because the figurative art or academic drawings are unpopular and "useless" since a hundred years...
I want my drawings to get stronger, every line to be stronger. Each line or mark got to be felt and lived profoundly and have a reason to be expressed. I don't want to get into a fake "make up effect", which hides very often the inability to read and translate in a graphic language, what we see.
For now my goal will be "that"; give more sense, expression and depth to my pencil work and to concentrate only on that for a while...

Comments

  1. muy buenos dibujos Helen ,saludos Dani

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  2. Interesantes reflexiones. Good drawings, as always.

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  3. Ciao Helen, sono pienamente d'accordo con te, quindi buon lavoro di matita e vedrai che i tuoi disegni non saranno "d'effetto" ma espressione del tuo vero essere. Luigi.

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