Nudes ... not so naughty

This morning, I checked in on Danny Gregory's Everyday Matters as has become my daily practice and discovered his topic today is life drawing. This is a wee bit coincidental because I've been thinking about writing on just that subject for a couple of weeks now, ever since borrowing five library books on the subject (primarily for their segments on foreshortening).

Last Monday, I was leafing through one which has a lot of photographs of models in various poses, and Jack walked in and peeked over my shoulder.

"Whoa, naked people!" he exclaimed, all titillated as people generally are when they spy pictures of naked people. He playfully plucked my book from my hands and began flipping through the pages with a look of bemusement. And then he handed it back to me.

"All done?" I said.

"Yeah. I thought it would be much more sexy. But it's not really sexy at all."

And that's the thing that struck me. It isn't sexy drawing naked people. You would think it would be, but no.

I've had lots of experience drawing naked people. It's an art school thang. I always kind of assume everyone has sat in on a life drawing class and it always surprises me a bit when I realize that not everyone has, that not even most people have.

And I think the common assumption would be that drawing nudes would be a hot and sweaty endeavor, fraught with sexual urgings and such at the site of unveiled nipples and thigh muscles and pubic regions and long stretches of flesh. I think people might even think it a wee bit naughty or scandalous.

I know my Granny Ford certainly didn't think it appropriate for a nineteen year old me to be drawing nude people sprawled across sagging old art studio couches of questionable origin and vintage... especially nude and sprawling MEN with all their manly bits hanging out for all the world to see. I think she thought it akin to pornography.

"What?!" I remember her expression clearly, bread crumbs tumbling from her lips, her hand gripping the butter knife as she prepared to slather a luncheon roll with butter, goggling in horror when i casually mentioned that i had to get back to school soon because we had a life drawing session and it was particularly important that I not miss them, as models were expensive and more exotic and infrequent than the usual dry still life set-ups of boxes and cones and tinfoil. "They're naked? Completely? Completely naked? And they are sometimes men?!"

It was clear this was a horror too profound for her, one that made her feel a little faint and nauseated. The butter knife, still hovering in mid-air, trembled a little with building outrage as I tried to brush it off with a casual roll off my eyes and a shrug.

"Believe me, Gran, it's no big deal. It's not much different than drawing a tree or a chair, really." (Although in fact, it is. It's much different.)

"And the university...the university...they endorse this? This is a part of your class? Your education? These...these...these naked people? You can't draw them with their clothes on?"

"O, Gran. It's just human anatomy. You have to see the musculature, the way the arms connect to the shoulders, the way the legs connect to the torso and the way the knee bend and all that."

"but why can't they just wear shorts or something?" she looked almost tearful. I don't know. Maybe she thought this damned me to hell. maybe she thought the site of naked people would permanently pervert me, bend my moral compass in some unalterable way. Maybe she was imagining my smoldering remains, her granddaughter singed to cinders whilst some cloven hooved demon pranced and paraded (no doubt wagging his hind ones in a provocative and unseemly way).

"O, Gran. It's just ART! Art, you know? Artists have been doing nudes for centuries. Monet drew naked people, Picasso drew naked people, Da Vinci drew naked people... in fact he drew cadavers stolen from the gallows. He actually peeled back their skin to look at the muscles. He drew some of the first medical textbooks. "

Her mouth tightened into a thin ridge of disapproval. Although I had not convinced her, I'm sure, she let the subject drop with the resigned, mournful air of someone who had done all they could, but you know, sigh... there was just no saving some people.

The first life drawing class I took was anti-climatic indeed. My last year of high school (in Denver, Colorado), I was among a group of promising art students selected from area high schools to participate in a special series of professional artist's workshops and among the events was to be a life drawing session with real live and naked models. I was bursting with anticipation as I set up my easel and impatiently clipped newsprint to it, charcoal at the ready. Patiently I waited for something... an instructor to appear, a glorious alabaster body in a traditional greek pose to be suddenly unveiled...something.

I waited, and waited. Minutes ticked by.

My curious peers stirred and began whispering. A spiky hair guy in nothing but a paisley robe padded through, looking confused. A couple of middle aged adults with serious expressions muttered in the doorway, looking at us, a shiny faced mob of about fourteen high schoolers then disappeared.

More minutes. Stretching now to nearly an hour. It was all becoming very mysterious. I stared blankly around the studio at my puzzled classmates, at the sheet draped platform around which photographer's lamps and drawing easels were uniformly arranged. the air was filled with a low buzz of anticipation....and nothing.

And then suddenly a large, bespectacled women gripping a clipboard appeared at my elbow, asking for my vitals. What was my name, what school was I from, and what was my birth date.

"So, that makes you what," she said with a frown, " sixteen? You can't be in here. Collect your things and come with me."

What? Huh? It turns out that one of the student's mothers had clicked into the fact that life drawing meant drawing people in their ...gasp! All-togethers and had complained, had in fact, thrown a major wobbly, leading to the quick and decisive mandate that no one under the age of eighteen be allowed to participate in life drawing sessions. Instead we were herded into the lobby to draw a hastily erected still life of apples and wicker baskets. Eventually they allowed us to do some quick sketches of some shirtless guy in jeans belted with one of those big buckled cowboy belts while concerned capital M Mothers flapped behind us in tight, clucking clusters. In furious protest, I glared narrowly at the Mothers and drew black boxes over the model's eyes, elbows and general boy zone. No one seemed particularly impressed by my political statement, however.

Needless to say, I was sorely disappointed. And not because I was sixteen and therefore all hopped up on adolescent hormones (although I surely was), and not because despite my share of teenage fumbling, I hadn't yet seen a completely naked man in the flesh (my little brother, raucous midnight skinny dipping incidents and accidental, mortifying, deeply suppressed flashes of my dad in the bathroom aside).

But because life drawing from real live nude models seemed like the pinnacle of artistic education... like graduating. Finally, the gawky apprentice is allowed some real responsibility, allowed to hang with the big boys. Make the mop swab and swing and fetch the water by itself.

Being all resilient and sixteen and stuff, I recovered. But the allure of life drawing was duly enhanced by this incident.

Round 'bout my third year of university, I switched my major for the third time to Fine Arts (I would go on to switch majors again and again...but my academic history is epic and not the topic here.) As far as I could tell, Fine Art was mostly about looking artfully tousled and nonchalant and developing deeply pretentious, carelessly vague justifications for use during class critiques. And every one hated drawing class. Everyone except me. It was undoubtedly my favourite class.

For the first two months we did endless perspective exercises, drew innumerable still-lifes (still lives?!), practiced draping and shadows and finessing our line work. We did a massive self-portrait series. We drew glass jars on tin foil, studying the texture and lively reflection. We drew endless boxes and even sheets of paper lying flat on the floor.

And then finally, the first of our nude models showed up. And o... I felt like this was an honour I had earned. The joy of drawing something real and full of breath, skin and bones and weighty flesh. Something with a face and a personality, something that moved. Danny Gregory describes it all masterfully and I really encourage you to read his entry about it.

But the point of all this is, once I got past the initial embarrassment of staring openly at an unrobed person, once I got past the "oh, man... i wonder what she/he is thinking... I wonder if she's cold" ... all the preconceived ideas about what it would be like to draw someone in the nude fell to the wayside. It felt natural and easy. And challenging. There really is nothing more challenging to my mind.

And this is the thing....there was nothing remotely sexual about it. If anything, it's almost clinical. And I guess i can't speak for others, but I held a kind of reverence for the models. I manufactured their life stories as I drew them. Once, while standing in an endless queue waiting to register, I realized with a start that I'd been standing directly behind one of our regular models (Rosemarie) for at least 45 minutes. I didn't recognize her with her clothes on. I mean, really... it can not be easy to disrobe in front of a room full of strangers and stand there clad only in goosebumps while they peer at you intently and study your every nook and cranny from every angle, with little regard for creating a flattering portrait. Unlike when you're drawing someone you know, with life drawing your goal is not to please the sitter. It's to capture life... a gesture... a moment, volume and mass and try to make the human image root itself as solidly on paper as it is in front of you. And it's hard.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the lessons I learned in various life drawing classes i've taken since. I'm drawing dinosaurs once again and the thing about drawing dinosaurs is there is no photographic reference available. I'm working from photos of skulls and fossil casts and other illustrated interpretations of their skeletons and musculature. And while I'm doing cartoons and they are far from being photographic, I think it's important to try to imbue them with life and character and mass.

And I've been thinking, it's high time I brushed up on my life drawing skills. I need to hunt down a class as soon as I get through this most recent round o' work. It will be good for me.

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