Squad,
There are life drawing sessions on Tuesday nights here. I don't have time to go often but when I do I find it alternately exhilarating and frustrating. I've experimented with all kinds of ways to draw - using guidelines for perspective, copying other people's styles, drawing outlines first and then filling in details, shading, not shading, charcoal, crayons, pastels, you name it - and I've found the best way is like this:
First (and most important) you stare at the model. Sometimes that's embarrassing for both parties because I usually stare longer than the other students, but I smile gently and put them at ease. Don't pretend that they aren't naked but don't be uncomfortable with it. So you stare and then you see the place to start. For a long time I started with the feet because once when I was at art college a tutor told me off very scornfully because I'd neglected the feet. Ever since then I've had a chip on my shoulder about it and I draw _the_ most beautiful feet you've ever seen on all my subjects. So, for me, often it's the feet, but sometimes it's the curve in the back or the belly, or the shadow under the breast or chin. There's always one place that seems the right place to start. I've never seen a naked human being who wasn't beautiful in some way; maybe it's the beauty that you're drawn to. I don't know, but there's something.
Once you've drawn the first bit then you move naturally onto the next part that feels right. It's important not to get distracted. Your drawing may well look extremely crap at this stage but ignore it and keep going. Concentrate. It's very important to concentrate. You have to shut out the other students and the whirring air conditioner and whatever you were thinking about before you got there.
To be honest quite often my artwork is still crap because I don't concentrate or because I think to much about what I'm doing or because I get impatient and don't stare for long enough. But sometimes, just sometimes, I get into it and it works.
It's never the first drawing of a session. It usually happens after two or three. When my head becomes clear and gradually the lines start to flow from my pencil without my thinking about it. I don't wonder what I'm going to do next or worry about whether it looks good or not, it just happens. It's not me drawing the picture, the picture draws itself through me. When I'm finished I step back and look at it and it's great and I can't wait to start another one. But the really cool thing is that it's not just the drawing that is better - it's all of me. I feel happier, more confident, more attractive. I'm ready to experiment with new techniques and I don't care whether or not anyone else has tried them before. These are moments of pure power, when you know what is good - you are absolutely sure of it and you just let it take you.
You can call it a connection with dynamic quality or you can call it inspiration or intuition or whatever you like. The important thing is to discover how to do it and to practise because it's the most natural and pleasing state for a human being to be in. It is a position of non-separateness. I truly believe that when caught up in a creative act I cease to exist in space and time. Really. The static boundaries that come between me and everything else fade away. Perhaps not always completely but they get less. I am not only in one place or one time, I'm spread out.
This is dynamic quality. This is precisely the dynamic quality that Pirsig talks about with his song on the radio example. Sometimes a piece of music lifts you out of yourself so powerfully that there ceases to be any distinction between yourself and the music.
To be continued
Diana
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