Wednesday morning drop in and Wednesday evening life drawing

Wednesday morning.
In the morning M continues to explore texture, drips, and adds... a hand!!!
A has nearly....nearly finished her complex painting of twigs and a bird,
and L begins another self portrait with touch as the starting point.

I encourage students to work on self portraits before they go on to paint other people, either from life or a photograph as you often feel a pressure to make it 'nice' for the viewer.. and when working from your own face this doesn't seem to happen so you can really look, or sometimes, feel.
It seems odd I know to start with touch, but it is something I have been exploring with myself and students for a while now.
We paint not just to get a likeness.... we can do that by photography, it has to be something else,
the feeling, emotion, the light, weight, intention... often the tactile experience of the paint, charcoal etc, is very significant. exploring by touch is so surprising, something that looks fluffy is sharp, a jug has an interior and exterior, I could go on and on.

Wednesday eve life drawing
We start as always with some breathing to focus our minds and leave the day outside the studio....I thought as it was a very small group I would skip the breathing, but they were adamant, in fact we did longer. I then try to explore some of the work we are going to be doing in the drawing. Not as peculiar as it sounds...eg if we are looking at weight, balance etc, with our eyes closed we can focus on this in our own bodies and the transfer that experience when drawing from the model. I have been using this more and more. you would be surprise at how the internalized feeling can work when looking.
This week I was focusing on the tiny foreshortening that occurs, sometimes at odds with what we see. We stood still and experienced our hands then brought one up to near our face, that one felt huge while the other virtually disappeared. We explored this focus on the subtle foreshortening in the gestural poses and then again in the long pose, not worrying about other aspects.

The beauty of working from the same model week after week is that you can really explore just what drawing is for you, that day. The light, the depth, the dynamic, the slowness, the internal strength in a seemingly simple pose, etc etc.