For The Love of Life Drawing.

life drawing at The Orchard in Bristol with excellent model Mark

I walk into a room on the second floor of a kind of grand Victorian building, full of easels and grey hair. I’ve just arrived here from my thankless call centre job and am nervous. A pile of cushions, seating and sheets lie in the centre of a room, like a sacrificial altar, where a model perches serene, swathed in a robe: it’s a life drawing class and it’s about to be the first time in years I’ve drawn anything real. 

Two hours later I cannot believe, somehow, that I can still draw. Singularly undistracted by anything else, I’ve created a spirited drawing of the model and I am surprised that it is pretty good. I look around at what other people have made, as if suddenly remembering where I am - some people have made hesitant, barely-finished drawings, some have made scores of sketches, others have made sketches in oil paint on canvas. I started going fairly regularly. Sometimes it feels like a great success, sometimes it feels like an abysmal failure, but my drawings swiftly improve and I enjoy the total focus, the silence, the concentration. It feels as though I am feeding some part of me that has been kept in a cage for far too long.

drawings made whilst figuring out exercises for my tutored sessions

Years later, I decided to start running my own class. It started slowly and quietly, but now I’ve managed to grow and build a business, whilst becoming part of a vibrant community, which I now help to expand. I’ve hosted events, ran tutored classes and private functions and provided a space for hundreds, if not thousands of people, to experience life drawing and I cannot tell you how much I love that.

All kinds of people attend - people who’ve never drawn before, people who hate drawing, and those who do it daily. We all draw together in a shared concentration, a shared activity that is also private and internal. Some people talk to others and share their work, some don’t. I pick my way through the group and am amazed at the vast range of styles and approaches just in one small room of people. I love to see regulars change and develop their styles, I love meeting all the people that attend. 

The classes are peaceful and calm, so much so that people tell me every week how relaxed they feel afterwards. I think life drawing is like a meditation - we will ourselves to focus on one thing, and one thing alone, for 90 minutes. Doesn’t seem long, but when was the last time you did this? Other thoughts and distractions fade away as we draw the model in front of us, hoping our hands draw what our eyes see.

one of literally hundreds of drawings made in my sessions - this one is of Ruth

In case you’re wondering, there is a strange unwritten etiquette to the nudity. Models are robed until they are ready, and once they disrobe, the naked stranger before you almost transgresses personhood, becoming a majestic object who we study with a tentative, curious focus, trying our best to commit them to paper. I also model for classes and I feel this transformation when I model, a distinct lack of judgement, like I am being objectified in the only positive way. I feel like a beautiful bowl of fruit that everyone is trying to understand, mysterious and stoic in my stillness.

Finally, I love life drawing because I fucking love drawing the human figure. Now, after years of doing it weekly, snatching time to draw the odd pose, I come to expect the swell of a bicep, the strange curve of a crease between the thigh and calf of a bent leg. I anticipate how a shoulder turns into an arm as I draw, a weird automatic knowledge of the human form. The complex shapes, how they connect and change together, the shapes they create regularly overwhelm me with their beauty, leaving me with the strongest feeling that I simply must draw them. Drawing is one of the best ways we can understand something, and in doing it regularly, we can improve our understanding of the figure, of drawing as a practice, and maybe even understanding ourselves as viewers, as creators, as people.

Me, about to model for a session