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Eliza10
Guest
I have not read this entire thread, just parts, but I am going to throw in my opinion as an artist who has had many life-drawing classes.
Nothing is more challenging or beautiful to draw that the human form in its beauty and complexity. The forms are beautiful, the lights and shadows on the skin are too. Life drawing is so essential for becoming a better artist.
The first moments of my very first life-drawing class in college were a bit shocking, but that was only at first, and before I started drawing. Once I drew, the shock was gone. She was form, light, shadow. The artist just does not look at the nude in a sexual way.
I suppose as one here said, you are, in a way, “objectifying” the nude form. One does not look at the soul or the sexuality of the person. That part of the person is private. Of many courses and clases in lifedrawing, I remember only one artist, out of so very many, who was an older man, whose purpose I really questioned, both because of his lack of drawing skills and his manner of looking too “all-seeing” of his envioronment - not just the model but the other artists. He did not bear that familiar distracted, absorbed look of an artist at work.
To respect the privacy of the model, the artists rarely interact much with the model in any of the classes I have taken, other than polite, general talk when he/she is robed. Talking and drawing don’t go together anyway.
Ever feel invisable in front of someone completly absorbed in a book or project? Ask then a question, right next to them, and they don’t hear you or see you? Thats what its like for the model. The model her(or him)slf is “invisiable” while his form is seemingly stared at. But its not staring, and the model knows that, I believe.
Also, no artist in any class I’ve been in has ever disrobed and been the model. I think once a model didn’t show and an artist “sat in”, clothed, so we’d have a subject. I guess because the artists know each other as persons. And the model really is a worker providing a form for us.
Only once I had a personal-type conversation with a model. This is because it was her first art-modeling job and she looked painfully like she greatly regretted her decision to model. She was so uncomfortable it was hard to draw and ignore her because she was so tortured-looking. At break when she robed I encouraged her not to be embarassed, and she was relieved to talk about her regret. I showed her mine and others drawings, and I and another talked about the thought and concentration it takes to get the shades and forms right, and how you are never “looking” in a sexual way; you are in this completely different “zone” when drawing. She seemed much more at peace after break.
When you draw you endeavor to get into this “other state” where you see and record in drawing in a mindless sort of meditative state. Its a fluency, and a flowing, and voyeurism must take place in some completely other part of the brain – the two don’t engage at the same time. In the same way that drawing and verbal are on right and left sides of the brain, respectively, and don’t engagve at the same time, which which is why its difficult, if not impossible, to carry on a conversation while engrossed in an artwork.
Nothing is more challenging or beautiful to draw that the human form in its beauty and complexity. The forms are beautiful, the lights and shadows on the skin are too. Life drawing is so essential for becoming a better artist.
The first moments of my very first life-drawing class in college were a bit shocking, but that was only at first, and before I started drawing. Once I drew, the shock was gone. She was form, light, shadow. The artist just does not look at the nude in a sexual way.
I suppose as one here said, you are, in a way, “objectifying” the nude form. One does not look at the soul or the sexuality of the person. That part of the person is private. Of many courses and clases in lifedrawing, I remember only one artist, out of so very many, who was an older man, whose purpose I really questioned, both because of his lack of drawing skills and his manner of looking too “all-seeing” of his envioronment - not just the model but the other artists. He did not bear that familiar distracted, absorbed look of an artist at work.
To respect the privacy of the model, the artists rarely interact much with the model in any of the classes I have taken, other than polite, general talk when he/she is robed. Talking and drawing don’t go together anyway.
Ever feel invisable in front of someone completly absorbed in a book or project? Ask then a question, right next to them, and they don’t hear you or see you? Thats what its like for the model. The model her(or him)slf is “invisiable” while his form is seemingly stared at. But its not staring, and the model knows that, I believe.
Also, no artist in any class I’ve been in has ever disrobed and been the model. I think once a model didn’t show and an artist “sat in”, clothed, so we’d have a subject. I guess because the artists know each other as persons. And the model really is a worker providing a form for us.
Only once I had a personal-type conversation with a model. This is because it was her first art-modeling job and she looked painfully like she greatly regretted her decision to model. She was so uncomfortable it was hard to draw and ignore her because she was so tortured-looking. At break when she robed I encouraged her not to be embarassed, and she was relieved to talk about her regret. I showed her mine and others drawings, and I and another talked about the thought and concentration it takes to get the shades and forms right, and how you are never “looking” in a sexual way; you are in this completely different “zone” when drawing. She seemed much more at peace after break.
When you draw you endeavor to get into this “other state” where you see and record in drawing in a mindless sort of meditative state. Its a fluency, and a flowing, and voyeurism must take place in some completely other part of the brain – the two don’t engage at the same time. In the same way that drawing and verbal are on right and left sides of the brain, respectively, and don’t engagve at the same time, which which is why its difficult, if not impossible, to carry on a conversation while engrossed in an artwork.
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