After an incredibly work-heavy fall, and a December spent almost entirely in New York conference rooms or working around the clock at my kitchen table, I resolved to make a change in January:  I would meet new people, try new things, and make an effort to have a life outside of work even on weeknights (gasp!).  So when a friend of mine asked if I’d be interested in going to a figure drawing class on Wednesday after work, I said yes without hesitation.  Never mind that I know nothing about figure drawing and haven’t sketched anything more complicated than my hand since middle school — I figured if I could handle a ballet class and a design class, I could definitely do drawing.

then another thirty seconds to capture the next . . .

it was all going so fast and it was all I could do to keep up!  I had to start strategizing — find an anchoring line and work outwards from there; instead of focusing on anatomy, notice the geometry and proportions and turn it into a foot later; don’t get too bogged down in making any one thing too perfect.

But no rest for the wicked, right? Just as I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it, the model
busted out this pose.  Seriously.

Frankly, I’m surprised it looks like a woman and not a jellyfish

But after that we got into much longer poses — fifteen twenty minutes without interruption. Probably the longest I’ve stared with such concentration at another person.

By the time the model broke this last pose, we’d been in the room for over two hours — only it felt so much shorter!  I found drawing a live person in a short period of time to be an incredibly focusing, almost meditative exercise — less physical than yoga but similar in its ability to drive out all other thoughts.  And the hushed energy of the room — full of similarly focused people — reminded of the great reading rooms of the New York Public Library where everyone sits so silently intent on their pursuit of knowledge or art or escape from whatever.