Charcoal

Below are some of the first life-drawings I did. I had copied figures from comics before that, I had used anatomy for artists books as a teenager, had sketched people’s faces from life before, sketched and drawn friends, loved ones, teachers in school, professors in college, I had sketched my own hands but had never done regular figure drawing before 2017. I had a lot to learn. During the Great Financial Depression of 2008-2012 I had used quite a lot of photo references but drawing from life on a regular basis was another thing entirely.

I had been living in Dublin since 2011, had started work as a TEFL teacher and had stopped drawing and painting. This was a shame and I wanted to get back to my hobby and do something on a regular basis. I had applied to Dublin Sketchers, got on their email list but never attended an event. Eventually I worked up the courage to find a life drawing place and I came across Tadhg McGrath’s class somewhere and resolved to go of a Friday night. Tadhg was welcoming and ran his classes off Thomas Street in old Dublin. It was a cold and functional warehouse-type building frequented by students from the local art college as well as wanabees like myself.

There is something cringy about your first few life drawing classes – a man or more often a woman is about to strip and play statues in front of twenty or more fully dressed people and you feel a bit embarrassed for them. And on this night in the middle of December – the last class before the group broke up for Christmas – Tadhg had organised a double girl session … double the cringe and embarrassment! You quickly forget the shame, however, and end up fretting over how to depict not one but two figures interacting.

Materials

I liked the charcoal – Tadhg provided several different types and you were welcome to bring your own. This looks like it was willow charcoal but I can’t really remember. The newsprint paper didn’t allow much smudging, rather the charcoal could be wiped off it easily enough – you could use a rag or paper towel (or your hand) as an eraser. I liked smudging – the compressed charcoal I had used in the previous class with model David was pretty uncontrollable compared to this stuff but your hands would be covered with it.

Overall my proportions were very good, I think, despite not having drawn live people regularly or used charcoal much before that. My anatomy wasn’t too bad either and I even managed to get some definition on the bodies as well as rudimentary faces on people but overall my life drawing was no great shakes. (It got worse before it got “better”…) The main thing was was that I enjoyed the whole experience and found the people in there very nice and we went to the pub afterwards with them of course.

The one-minute poses were always a trial at first but they were absolutely essential to warm you up. You are drawing on the big easels on A2 size paper with a lump of charcoal between your thumb and first two fingers so your brain gets fired up with the flow state – that’s the theory.

The five-minute poses gave time to settle and get a bit more detail in but at first they are still way too short in your mind. Izabella was one of the girls on this night and she is an excellent model. She really inspires the artist to produce a flowing picture of the human form – one hip down, one shoulder up in the case of the above. My lines were ‘hairy’ as Tadhg called them but I was fully immersed in drawing Izzie and her buddy.

Some ten-minute poses preceded the break then the pair continued one of the ten-minute poses for another fifteen minutes after the break. It was an exhilarating first night with two figures – one is often tough enough but two people provides extra difficulties such as proportions between the pair, connecting the two people, trying to manage your time so you don’t draw just one and a ghost.

I think I did ok with that, hairy lines or not!

Hands and hair were a conundrum from the start but I was eager to give them the best treatment I could, given the time constraints. I think I did quite well in the above final fifteen-minute pose to end the evening. My fascination with drawing people’s flowing manes in real time had begun!

The actual first life drawings I did at Roisin Cunningham’s class in Ranelagh, Dublin in November 2017.