Day 7 – Life Drawing (Or ‘Equivilance’)

I’ve established quite a little ritual in the mornings at the backpackers hostel: get up; finish my blog post, breakfast and shower before meandering to the Art Café around the corner for coffee and emails. The subsequent walk to the Ruskin has become pleasantly familiar and it was odd to tread it for the last time.

What we did
Today was a life drawing day. We had an excellent model who held some wonderful poses, long short and an hour or so of constant movement. Long and short of it is: I love life drawing so I had a great day. 

Student’s perspective
Finishing the week on something practical like this was a good idea, we were all over brimming with the knowledge that had been imparted to us this week and putting our knowledge into action through drawing was certainly the best way to assimilate into our creative practice.

Tutor’s perspective
The last day must be a funny on for Sarah to run as some people get slightly restless towards the end of any course and my fellow class members started disappearing surprisingly early to catch their respective modes of transport (planes, trains, lifts from friends). It broke the end of the day up a little and it was a shame to not all be present and focused for the end of week review of work, but what can on do? We had three bottles of Champagne to celebrate the end of the course with, and it just left more for those of us still present in the evening! 

A thing I learnt
I need to rely less on schematic understandings of the body. I know this, Sarah pointed it out and it doesn’t hurt to remind myself of it constantly. The danger in becoming confident in your drawing is you can also get lazy and rely on your ability to make a pretty drawing rather than using the drawing as tool for enquiring after truth in what you have observed.

In Conclusion
I have had a fantastic week. The course has had a great rhythm to it (1 day Introduction, 2 days anatomical tuition and drawing, 2 days anatomical tuition and sculpting, 2 days putting everything in perspective and drawing) and I’ve met some lovely people on the course, not least the tutors! As far as my aim to seek out exemplary tuition goes, I haven’t been disappointed; not only have I learnt a lot about anatomy in the context of art and figure drawing, I have encountered some of the best teaching I’ve yet come across.  Next year I shall definitely be signing up to another of Sarah and Eleanor’s courses, I’m thinking about the Head and Neck one next.

If you want to find our more about courses at the Ruskin you can do so here. I would strongly recommend the course to anybody who has an interest in learning anatomy for artistic purposes.  

This post is last of a weeklong diary, you can read the rest here:
Introduction, Day 01, Day 02, Day 03, Day 04, Day 05, Day 06