Art in the Village, London, 30 June 2024

Some life drawing groups are reliably consistent. As the model employed, one knows how the venue will be arranged, how many poses will be needed, and how long each pose will last. One can mentally prepare a pose plan and proceed with certainty.

At other groups every session is an adventure. One may have a sense of tuition style or tone or energy, but pose requirements, artistic techniques to be practised, and any overarching theme may not be known till one is naked and awaiting instruction.

The former breed confidence; the latter are energising… like this one. 🙂

This was my third booking with Art in the Village. I knew from experience not to plan in advance, just enjoy the ride. But I also knew I would be in safe professional hands, treated with utmost care and respect, and have an engaging, challenging, lively time!

It was to be a session of contrasting halves. We started with our main exercise of the morning, for which the group’s inspirational tutor, Cleo asked the artists to prepare by each applying graphite across an entire sheet of paper using a soft pencil.

After a few minutes listening to the ocean-like swishes of 4B on A4, I was then asked to sit in a very open pose – lots of negative space from all angles – for artists to draw using erasers. In other words, subtractive drawing: where less is literally more.

I sat comfortably in position for the entire 45 minutes; not requiring a break, although several offers were forthcoming. In fact I thought the artists might struggle more than me, with it being their first attempt at this method, but they did really well.

For the second half, we had some improvised quick-pose fun. At Cleo’s suggestion, I worked my way around the arc of artists, standing in front of each for 2 minutes in an expressive theatrical pose. Artists captured all the poses on one sheet each.

Quick poses are often used as the warm-up before a long pose, but this light-hearted reversal made for a very nice warm-down. With ten minutes remaining, we squeezed in one final 10-minute pose and were done. Brilliant session! Thank you, Cleo. 🙂