*WARNING* You might see some boobies in this post.
The other night, I went to a figure drawing session at Backfence Society, which is just a town over from mine. I’ve been wanting to do one for some time now to practice drawing bodies, but all the sessions that I saw were taking place in locations that were pretty out of the way for me. When I saw that Backfence Society was hosting a figure drawing night, I decided I should try it out on my next free Wednesday. The last time that I did any sort of figure drawing was when I was in college, so I was actually really looking forward to this session.
The Session
After work and my workout at the gym, I made my way directly over to the Backfence Society Clubhouse. I was greeted by a friendly host, and met other really nice people. I didn’t have any giant drawing pads with me, so I ended up just bringing my Brown Recycled Sketch paper that I bought a while ago, as well as some charcoal pencils that a friend gave me years prior.
I was very intimidated when we started. Once I quickly got over the initial “OMG I’m staring at a naked person” reintroduction, I realized there seemed to be some sort of unwritten protocol to the sequence of events that everyone there seemed to know about, except me.
First we started with quick poses, about 30 seconds each, just to warm-up. Then we switched to longer poses lasting about 1 minute. Eventually we worked our way up to about a 5 min pose.
What I learned
- It was interesting to see how the drawings slowly improved over the course of these intervals. It felt like I was slowly reengaging my creative muscles.
- I couldn’t help but look over to either side of me to see what everyone else was creating or focusing on during each pose. I find it so fascinating how we can all be looking at the same person from different angles and get such different interpretations.
- Another thing that I realized is that it feels much different to be looking at a 3 dimensional model to reference for drawing, than it is to simply look at a photo. Something about it felt so tangible, and easier to grasp for me.
To wrap up…
In the end I really liked how my final drawings turned out. It forced me to realize that sometimes I do move rather quickly on some of my drawings, and don’t take time to just slow down and really observe what I’m looking at. It was also nice to get away from a computer screen and just draw on paper again. I’ve been in such a funk lately when it comes to art, so this was a great change of pace. Lastly, it was really nice to get myself out of the comfort of my home, and go out and meet strangers again. Being around other creatives really gets me energized. You betcha I’ll be doing more of these figure drawings in the future!
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