It Might Not Be Art But.....

The art studio was light and airy, the air conditioning turned up just a little too much. The silk robe slid off the life model a little too easily. She drew a short intake of breath as the students drew on their papers. The class had begun.
I hope you didn’t think the model was me. I’ve tried a lot of new things since I've been living here, but life modelling certainly isn’t one of them! It was scary enough drawing alongside a group of talented artists without being on the other side of the easel, thank you very much.
The workshop was run by the Figurative Art League of Chicago at the Naperville Art League’s headquarters in North Center Street, Naperville. I’d always considered myself pretty good at art at primary school, it just hadn’t occurred to me my skills wouldn’t have grown with me.
“We’ll start with some gesture drawing,” explained our instructor, Natalie. “Just a one minute rough sketch to show the position of the model.”
I picked up my pencil, freshly sharpened with my eyebrow pencil sharpener because I couldn’t find my real one. My first sketch was a bit scrappy, but since I couldn’t see anyone else’s I was quite happy with it.
After a few of these, we moved onto looking at shadow.
“Here, you can borrow my charcoal if you like,” said my neighbour taking pity on me.
I remember charcoal from school. I didn’t like it then either. Within seconds my paper, my hands and my clothes were covered in dusty black clouds. I looked like I’d spent a night in a coal mine.
We then tried another exercise, designed to really make us look at the models. By now Gerry Clarke, the founder of the Figurative Art League had joined in. (Let me just say, he didn’t have to worry about what to wear for work, but his suit fitted better than Grumpy's).
“This time just look at the models and don’t look at your paper at all,” said Natalie.
At break time we had our first chance to look at each other’s work. We had several more opportunities through the rest of the day, but I noticed no one came back to look at mine again, although I did receive some sympathetic smiles.
Eventually Natalie came up to see how I was doing.
She looked carefully at the delicate features of our lovely model Jill, then at the troll I had drawn.
“Hmm,” she mused. “Profiles are very difficult.”
I did suggest it would be easier if the models wore paper bags over their heads, but no one seemed to agree.
Natalie rubbed out the profile I had drawn and tried to draw one for me.
“Oh well, never mind,” she said as she realised it was like moving deckchairs on the Titanic, “just carry on.”
My fifth attempt did look a bit better. Natalie said a good way to get light into the picture was to use your eraser to rub out patches of pencil. Unfortunately I was a little over zealous and completely obliterated what I had drawn underneath so had to start again.
At the end of the workshop we were asked to display our work so everyone could admire what we had all achieved. There were delicate sketches coloured with pencils, bold pastels with strong lines, a beautiful oil painting and some scribble worthy of a five-year-old. As it turned out, the picture I drew without looking at the paper at all turned out to be my best effort. Guess its back to the drawing board for me.

The above will be a forthcoming Sun column. Here's what I actually drew...Commissions on request..available to interview prospective models any time...