One of the reasons why I felt somewhat iffy about taking Michael Grimaldi’s life drawing class at the Art Students League is the way time is marked off in this class: the shorter pose is two weeks and the longer one is four weeks. I could not fathom drawing the same pose for two weeks, let alone the logistics of setting that up (there is tape to mark of the placement of the feet).
And indeed it was initially quite challenging to adjust to the passage of time. The twenty minutes drawing increment felt like an eternity filled with starring at the model, making tentative marks, and scratching my head over why the marks don’t add up to the living breathing model in front of me. The breaks are then filled with starring at other people’s drawings and feeling completely inadequate. The timer goes off while I furiously erase away the remnants of failure. The silence descends on the huge studio and the process renews.
What the other people do in that hushed hollowed silence was a mystery to me. Seemingly random lines come together and the paper pulsates with life. My own enormous 18 x 24 in sketchpad, however, felt overwhelming and oppressive. I thought I would surely have a nightmare about gesture, proportion, and perspective.
Then today, a month later, I noticed an acceleration in time. 20 minutes pass before I have finished my train of thought. And I am anxious about finishing my drawing by the end of the week, the end of my two week pose.
During the long break, I got antsy about drawing and worked on the shading. By habit, I held my pencil out to check the tilt of a shadow shape. The model was not there and I was profoundly embarrassed. But I was mostly shocked at these new habits being instilled in me without my noticing them.
The seductive nature of the drawing process scares me. Drawing was something I always wanted to learn… I envisioned myself carrying a sketchbook around for the rest of my life and putting down some visual thoughts. How cool is that? I can have a great excuse to buy Moleskine sketchbooks. Oh I had no idea that drawing is an all consuming vortex.
I also hadn’t realized how much time it takes to actually learn how to draw. Here are the things people in my class have said to me in separate occasions over the past month and yes, I gasped to all of these statements:
It takes:
- 1 year to see that you are not seeing.
- 1-2 years to start managing anxiety.
- 2 years to learn the basics taught in this class.
I honestly though I would “learn to draw,” whatever that means, in a few months, ya know, give it a summer. Now I can totally envision myself learning to draw for the rest of my life.
Drawing seems to me not a set of skills or a craft, but a method of analysis, one that you cannot exhaust the use of in a lifetime. Besides, art is so insidious. It is permeating all aspects of my cognitive world. For example, I carefully avoided physiology in college (not all that easy as a biology major) only to learn anatomy in an art class. I see shadow shapes everywhere. Drawing is becoming and obsession. And I am not sure if that is a good thing.
*****
Yay—two books were waiting for me when I got home: Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck, and The Art Spirit by Robert Henri. When I first started this class, I found refuge in the recommended reading list because even though I can’t draw, I can read. I mean why draw when you can read all about it? I am somewhat kidding, yet it is still true that books are way less intimidating than the easel.
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