I tried life drawing!

Apologies to the models I may have offended...

I go along to the life drawing session. Called All The Young Nudes, it has a relaxed and friendly art studenty vibe. Young people are chattering away, getting settled in the seats around the edge of the room. Some are drinking wine and beer (the session is in the upstairs room of a pub). Music is playing: Prince, Blondie, Bowie. The playlist is put onto Spotify every week (Music To Draw To). This is going to be fun!

Plus, young people are so interesting to look at. There are some great outfits (lots of rust/terracotta-type colours being worn), and loads of those tiny fringes that are about two inches long that arty girls have. All this - booze, music, fringes - makes it very different from the sort of art group that meets in a grim community centre to draw in silence.

You know the type. They do all that holding-out-the-pencil-to-measure-proportions thing, which I find baffling.

Actually, I find life drawing baffling. But in this fun, relaxed atmosphere I’m determined to give it my best shot.

There are two models - a man and a woman. The first pose is just two minutes long before the models move again.

Yes, TWO minutes! I look around the room, acclimatising myself, wondering whether I should have my fringe chopped shorter. Or, with my massive forehead, would it just look weird?

Ding! goes the timer and I haven’t even unzipped my pencil case! All I’ve done is think about hair!

The models rearrange themselves for the second two-minute pose. This time I’m all primed, ready to spring, like a cat.

Two minutes is just long enough to make this terrible scribble of a woman trying remove something that’s stuck to her back.

Ding! Another two-minute pose starts.

This is the man desperately rattling the door knob in order to get out of here, away from my shabby drawing.

Notice how I’m too embarrassed to draw his willy? That’s the dilemma - focus 90% of your two minutes on the appendage in an attempt to render it faithfully, or just dash down a quick line? I’m still deliberating, worrying that drawing it in too much forensic detail compared to the other parts will make it look as if I’m staring at it obsessively when—

Ding! The pose is over. Now a five minute one. That’ll be easier, I reckon.

To make it even easier I do the man from behind.

No willy now. Just a big strong hairy bottom. My aim is to make him look and powerful and imposing, like a statue carved from granite. That will be my artistic statement: ‘The artist seeks to capture masculine heft.’ Trouble is, I’m distracted because the model is uncannily similar to a photographer who came round to take my picture for a newspaper, and now it’s impossible to look at him neutrally, merely as ‘a series of shapes and angles’, as life drawing advice often suggests.

I try to disassociate myself and stop thinking HE’S JUST LIKE THAT PHOTOGRAPHER WHO DRANK TEA IN MY KITCHEN and regard the model as if he’s, say, a sofa or a block of flats.

I must stop thinking how much he looks like— (name redacted). But I can’t. Maybe that’s why things go wonky, and where one of his hands was supposed to be, I give him a sort of foot.

My God that’s an abomination better try the woman again!

The next pose is twenty minutes. That’s long enough to make an extremely beautiful young woman look like this:

I wonder if she’d like to use it on her dating profile?

I glance in despair at the man sitting beside me, sketching away. His drawings are anatomically correct - no one has a foot where a hand should be - yet lively and fluid, done with just a single pencil. I’ve made the rookie error of lugging in too many materials, in that ‘if I throw enough stuff at this thing, something’s bound to come out okay!’ kind of way.

It’s like when you feel unconfident about your body and take 20 different bikini/swimsuit/tankini-type options on holiday, plus another suitcase just for kaftans.

Tonight, I brought the biggest sketchbook available in the art shop, thinking it would make me ‘loose’ and ‘free’. What it’s making me is an asshole as I keep bashing it into the young woman sitting on my other side. I’ve also brought pens, a bottle of ink, brushes, rubber, charcoal, oil pastels, chalk, watercolours, a dip pen, a little bottle of water and about 37 pencils of varying densities.

I only just stopped short of bringing in a set of acrylics, a full-sized easel and a printing press.

Even the large glass of sauvignon isn’t helping me. What’s going on? Booze usually loosens me up - sometimes with less than ideal consequences. Many years ago it was responsible for me waking up and being struck by abject terror as I blinked at the back of head on the other pillow (short fair hair - who the hell could it be?), until the person turned round and said, ‘Morning, Fi.’

It was my friend Suey from work.

Tonight, the drink is having zero effect. I down a second large wine and things are no better. ‘I wish I could draw like you,’ I tell the man next to me. ‘How d’you make a human look like a human?’

He explains that some people like to sketch in the main shapes first, while others go for ‘the gesture.’

Although I’m not sure what that means, I try to give it a go.

I’m not sure if this is the man or the woman. But whoever it is, they’re praying for me to stop drawing them and go away.

I’m sure the woman would gesture at me to f-off, if it wouldn’t be unprofessional, for giving her extremely odd looking bosoms and a tiny head.

Be loose and relaxed! I tell myself. LOOSE AND RELAXED! But it’s impossible. It’s like being in hospital and being told to JUST RELAX!!! as they loom towards you with a colonoscope.

In my ‘relaxed’ way I draw the woman slapping herself on the head.

…The final ding! The models’ gowns go on, and everyone starts to pack up. Hey, I’m not ready to leave yet! I keep on scribbling. There’s just time, before they kick us out, to turn the model’s elegant bun into a doughnut stuck to the top of her head.

Aw, never mind the drawing part. What about short fringes? What do we think?

Love,

Fiona xx