ARTISTS TALKING

# 11 [8 July 2009]

I've just watched one of the "Today's Nude" programmes on my computer via Channel4 O.D. (Now there's an unfortunate name - confirms my impression that too much television is bad for you).  A very strange experience it was too, but great to hear Maggi Hambling talking about drawing.  She used the "drawing as battlefield" analogy, but made it sound more like good sense - she didn't say that a drawing should look like a battlefield, nor did she use the term to define a "good" drawing.

Not being used to the TV these days (I got rid of mine years ago, when I couldn't stand it any more) I had forgotten about the adverts.  Just when M.H. is telling us that drawing is about energy and total concentration - cut to inane fizzy drink/breakfast cereal commercials.  Perhaps it was purposely ironic?  There were several moments when the process of TV filming was apparent - deliberate shots of the camera, a less deliberate shot of someone's left knee and shoulder appearing round a corner, and a view of the camera track making an interesting line in the final shot. 

But then there was the short intro. piece (probably a trailer, but you can't trail at the front, can you?) complete with slinky panning shots and the cliché of the dropped dressing gown.  Who were they trying to entice in to the programme?  I had to "sign" a declaration to say that I was over 16 before I could watch it.

I played along for a bit, got out my sketchbook and drew from the computer screen.  But oh how boring compared with the real thing - flat, flat, flat.  And the image is SO SMALL.  I stopped trying to draw, and wrote "what is the point" in big letters; but of course the programme isn't aimed at professional artists.  If you've never drawn from life before it would be fascinating, and a good incentive to get out to a real life class.  And then up piped dear Maggi H. to say exactly that.  Ah, great minds think alike. Somewhat subversive of her, too, considering the context.  (As noted by the Radio4 critics; see yesterday's blog.)  It would have been interesting to have more shots of M.H. drawing (could have done with more of her opinions too).   And what a model that Matthew Oghene is:  I hope they paid him more than the measly minimum wage the models get around here.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/life-class-todays-nude/4od#2926659

# 12 [11 August 2009]

So it really is more than a month since I posted on this blog.  What on earth have I been doing with my time?  It's sad, but sometimes staying alive is a full time job on its' own. Still, staying alive is pretty good.

I did a bit of investigation into attitudes to life drawing:  comments on the Channel 4 website, responding to the televised life classes, were typical. Most posts were positive, with many people resolving to go to “proper” life classes – so in that respect the programmes were a success.  The negative comments were predictable and concentrated on the issue of nudity on daytime television rather than anything to do with drawing: “boring”, “a ploy to increase ratings”, “disgusting; shouldn’t be allowed; my children might see it”.  I can’t imagine that my parents would have objected, even in the 1950s (the Lord Chamberlain wouldn’t have permitted it in those days, of course).  On a medical forum, where the comments were mostly favourable and certainly not outraged by Nudity on Television, I found a link to the Sun newspaper.  The Sun asked for comments in its’ usual “cor phwoar” tone – and the comments almost all said “so what? No big deal”.  I suppose Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells reads the Telegraph.

# 13 [24 August 2009]

I went down to London (and it is "down", not "up", from here) last week ostensibly to see the William Orpen drawings at Tate Britain. 

Emerging from Euston Station feeling a little punch-drunk from travelling two hundred and odd miles in just under two hours, much of it at an angle of 10 degrees from vertical, I staggered across the road to the Wellcome Institute for a rest.  (Good café, London prices; reasonable bookshop).  The "Exquisite Bodies" exhibition was still on - I'd completely forgotten about it. The following is an extract from a longer piece of writing:

Subtitled "the Curious and Grotesque Story of the Anatomical Model", the display wobbles uneasily between the clinical, didactic or "scientific" models and the sensationalist, allegedly educational, travelling fairground shows. The elements of voyeurism inherent in the exhibition are approached only obliquely, by reference to the historical "freakshow". 

 Many of the anatomical models on display are smaller than life-size and not desperately accurate, and therefore relatively undisturbing.  However, the wax model of a dissected head by Joseph Towne carries an impact way beyond its' intended use for anatomy students.  It seemed to me to be pathetic, even tragic, modelled with an almost tender intimacy.  Yet it was shown at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and so has a long history of public exposure at odds with its' ostensible function as a teaching aid within the closed circle of medical education.  And, and, and.... it raises so many unaddressed questions:  who was the original subject of the model? how did he die? (not obviously hanged, so presumably a pauper, these being the contemporary legal sources of bodies for dissection).  Did anyone visiting the Great Exhibition recognise him?  Why should a simulacrum of death be almost as disturbing as the real thing? is the distress due to the cultural associations of head & brain, brain & mind, identity and personality?  and on and on..

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/exhibitions/Exquisite-Bodies

# 14 [26 August 2009]

I've had a lot of emails forwarded from The Drawing Research Network this week: the topic is "drawing exercises", and several suggestions have been quite interesting.  I liked one suggestion which treated the drawing of a simple line almost as a meditation, although when I tried it it seemed a bit ordinary.  Probably needs to be done v e r y  s l o w l y on a large piece of paper. 

During a recent workshop with Sandy Sykes at the Regional Print Centre in Wrexham we did  a series of warm-up exercises which, although somewhat off the wall, produced some intriguing results.  Starting with sheets of paper loosely assembled into book format, we drew under instruction: first a simple shape, "make it bigger, make it smaller, turn the page,  give it some socks" (really!) "wash the socks, give it some friends" and so on and so on until the book was full.  The idea was to use the drawings as a basis for what might be called free-form print making.The results were varied, interesting and entertaining.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=93656&id=432...

I don't know whether the whole exercise would be very popular with a class of intensely serious science students, but I think something similar would be worth considering.  It's important to loosen up physically and focus mentally if you're going to get any proper work done.  However, bitter experience suggests that a lot of hobby artists don't like preparatory excercises.  I'm not sure why.  I wonder if they consider it distracting from the real business of producing a "proper drawing" that they can sign & date, and show to their friends.

# 15 [1 September 2009]

Looking out of my living room window, and thinking about the book I'm reading on Peter Lanyon I appreciate his comments about the landscape and the figure. "long drawings...there may be a stretch right across a thigh and a leg which would lead to paintings of very long landscapes..." 

The lines of the old field boundaries lie in slow curves on the hillside, throwing shadows across the fields in the evening light. The effect is sensous, "pleasing to the senses", and intriguing, hinting at things hidden under the surface the sinews and muscles of the land.

# 16 [6 October 2009]

All quiet on the project front at the moment - the SSC briefs are submitted and now I have to wait to find out whether anyone actually selects one of my topics to study next year. It took me a whole day and a half to get four SSCs written complete with "learning outcomes" -so they'd better get picked. 

(and who on earth coined the phrase "learning outcome" in the first place?  a classic example of using two words when one will do.  Two words presumably have twice the impact of one word.  Discuss, writing on one side of the paper only.)

(Sorry, been reading "1066 and All That" again.  Still funny after all these years, and many of the little line drawings by John Reynolds are tiny masterpieces).

# 17 [4 November 2009]

Back to life classes after the half term break.  The "proper" model failed to turn up (again - and it's not always the same model, either) and (again) one of the tutor's friends stood in.  These "temps" are always really good, stand or sit very still and have interesting shapes, but - being amateurs - don't take their clothes off.  I don't find drapery very exciting to draw, never have, and it doesn't help my anatomy revision....

Still, I sat on the floor below the dais to get some interesting foreshortening, and then wandered around drawing the surface anatomy.  Reviewing these last drawings today, I'm struck by the resemblance between the shapes underlying the upper arm and the landscape drawing posted earlier; how the light flows over the surface planes, delineating the underlying structure.

# 18 [24 November 2009]

Life classes again, and this time a model who teaches Yoga.  She held the pose for two forty minute sessions without a break: I tried it at home later and suffered acute discomfort over the greater trochanter of both hips (the sticky-out bony bit at the outer edge of the top of the thigh -  it's quicker to use the anatomical term).  It's seriously difficult to get the gesture of the pose correct when the body is contorted:  in fact, some of the limbs don't even look human.

The nature of the pose raises some questions about the relationship between artist and model:  we're all concerned about the model's comfort to start with, but then get engrossed in our work and run the risk of forgetting the person on the dais.  The subject becomes an object if you're not careful - satirised nicely in "The Horse's Mouth" by (Mr.) Joyce Carey when sculptor's model Lolie eventually succumbs after days of posing in the nude for her husband, Abel: 

"The diagnosis at the hospital was exposure, shock, displacement of the caudal vertebrae and malnutrition.....Abel's fussing about his lump of nonsense [the stone] and the trouble with Lolie, did not, as I had feared put me off my work." (from the Penguin edition1978, © the author 1944)

Some similarities with the alleged indifference of medics to patients? Shurely not, as they say in Private Eye.

# 19 [27 November 2009]

A discussion on life drawing, anatomy & art has just started on the Drawing Research Network:

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A1=ind...

Contributers, so far, are enthusiastically in support of observational drawing from life as a valuable activity at all levels.   Well, they/we would be, wouldn't they/we?  The drawing versus no-drawing debate is probably set to continue for ever, a bit like the "painting is dead" debate. I don't think there's any doubt that you don't need to be able to produce Victorian Art School style drawings in order to be an artist, and probably the academic, 5H pencil, drawing from plaster casts for a year method of teaching did enough to kill off drawing for ever.  The fact that it didn't do so shows that the need to draw, or make marks, is deeply ingrained in the human brain.

# 20 [1 December 2009]

Some interesting correspondence by email has produced the following link to a fascinating website hosted by Loughborough University:  http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/AHRC/index.h...

Too many issues to start analysing them one by one here.  Lots of things to think about at leisure.  Our attitides to our own bodies and those of others are so complex... does it all boil down to some basic need for privacy? Why?  memo to self:  look up theories on the development of ideas of "personal modesty".  Likely to be somewhat fanciful? certainly Very Cultural.

At the Life Class yesterday the model was posing (unclothed) "in public" for the first time, and the pose was obviously arranged with this in mind.  The tutor seated him on a padded box with a cloth backdrop - relatively comfortable, and no draughts.  The pose also effectively concealed the young man's genitalia and meant that he had no-one seated behind him, out of his range of vision and likely to cause him more unease.

Downside - one pose for 2 hours (including tea break).  The big problem with this particular class is that most people want a nice drawing to take home, and veto any warming up exercises, short poses or anything seditious which might be additionally challenging.

Another memo to self:  remember this is a public blog, and keep rude remarks to a minimum.

But I can't spend two hours with dry media on one piece of A1 paper without running the risk of producing something tight and overworked.  (most other folk are using 2B pencils and A4 max.)  So I'm usually up and down stepladders, sitting on the floor, walking round the room and generally making an exhibition of myself; but yesterday I didn't want to worry the model ...

Why do I keep going?  a question of travelling distance, I'm afraid, particularly at this time of year when the waterlogged roads have turned to sheet ice. But I am on the lookout for something a bit more challenging, if it's not too far away.