Online life drawing

I love life drawing, but all classes were cancelled during the lock down. There was a huge boom in life drawing via Zoom, with models desperate to carry on working somehow. I’d never done it before, but it does feel a bit like very soft porn at first. Looking at naked people over the Internet. But it works.

There seem to be two approaches. Live or saved videos of models posing, or still photos to work from. Pros and cons to both. One definite pro is that models can adopt extremely foreshortened poses, with the camera below their feet or over their heads or in very difficult/unstable poses which they can’t hold for more than a few seconds. These are just a few. There are so many that I have been binding them into collections.

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Just a sample of work from online model sessions.

Lino printing tools

Carrying on with the lino printing. I have made a simple bench hook, Eric gives a very solid support for the printing block whilst you are carving it. Again, an idea from YouTube. I have used bench hooks for normal wood working for years, to hold wood still whilst you saw it. This works just as well, especially if the link is glued to a baking block. Just three bits of wood, a piece of plywood and some glue. You can buy one for £20…

Looking through some remaindered books in a local discount store, I found a book on “Anatomy for Plates Exercises” which is actually one of the best artists anatomy books I have found. Strange what you find.