I'm Back!

figure drawing studio, December 2010

Back at square one, drawing figures like a first year art student.  It feels like my slate was accidentally wiped clean.  This is both exciting and mildly depressing.  It’s exciting to be going to this weekly open figure drawing studio on the island.  It’s exciting to be back in that moment that is all promise, of learning how to really see, of building skills, unaware of the upcoming salt in the wounds that is artmaking.  For now, it feels like a warm bath with Epsom salt. 

It is mildly depressing to imagine where my work might have been had I not stepped away from it for these past twelve years.  So many of my college friends kept their nose to the grindstone and their work has grown and evolved and they exhibit nationally, internationally.  I have posted links for some of these brilliant peers of mine as well as some of our teachers, mostly because I like putting myself in their company, but also because I genuinely like their work, and these artists were influences for me in my formative years.  My Rosetta Stone.

Figure Drawing circa 1990

One of a handful of drawings I kept from my foundation year at Otis (then Otis/Parsons), definitely the most grueling year of my life.  We had a six-hour figure drawing class every week, which included about 15 hours per week of homework (including drawing ourselves nude).  Our teacher, Gary Geraths, taught us to draw the figure from the inside out, starting with the skeleton.  We would have a live model in front of us, but as you looked at all the drawing boards, they were filled with skeletons.  By the end of the first semester we finally had worked up to adding muscle, and then skin.  In this drawing you can see some of the bone and muscle structure the drawing started with.  We used large scale paper to be able to get more precise with the forms. The model had to hold this pose for several hours (plus breaks), which is probably why she is lying down.  I remember she had a navel piercing, which I had never seen before but thought was really cool.

Up and at 'em

Dipping my toes back into artmaking.  I have a studio space set up for the first time since my initial post-art-school efforts.  I started hanging recent work to see where I was heading.  Then I added 20 year old figure drawings to figure out where I had been.  Hmm.