I used to believe that drawing a portrait, or a figure, 'in real life', was better than drawing from a photograph or screen. When I say better, I mean the process was more likely to result in a drawing with a feeling of vitality.
But I've learnt the secret of this vitality is more to do with time, focus and intention.
I have drawn a live model in the studio and produced stilted drawings, and I have participated in Zoom sessions on screen and produced lively and vital drawings.
In both cases, the poses are timed. That is, the model will hold the pose for a set time (usually between 5 and 20 minutes). So to achieve a drawing representing the model, you must focus and work with some speed.
If I focus too much on accuracy the drawing can feel a bit dead. But conversely, if there is a struggle, and that struggle is revealed in the drawing, it comes alive.
You can see the vigour and liveliness of a struggle so well in Tracey Emin's work. It's barely about representation of a human figure. The paintings are smashed out. The figures have become a scrawled mixture of suggested limbs and backwards words. In some, words literally take over.
I don't aim to draw like Tracey Emin but I'm interested in the level of life in the images I create.
For my own practice, the liveliness that excites me the most happens around struggle and risk. But a different risk than Emin. I think of Emin as a confessional artist who has suffered a lot of trauma and her work deals with that. So you could say, the risk is in the reveal.
In my work, the risk is in aiming for a recognisable representation with a leap. It's seeing the line of a waist and hip and striking for that line with one gesture. It feels like mental acrobatics. The spatial awareness feels the same to me as moving in a dance class. It's like training for a back flip with support and then eventually you make that leap without support because you've learnt the feel of it.
That feeling is so good, it's like flying. But there's always a touch of fear associated with it. Because sometimes, I can't focus and I can't connect. My mind is too busy, or I'm too tired.
But I feel consoled that 'bad drawings' have the life of the struggle in them. So in a sense it doesn't matter. It's just a case of do it and submit to how it turns out. I start with intention but I don't force the outcome. I intend to draw a row of ten figures the same size. But I produce ten of varying sizes.
So that's OK, because if I ruled lines across the drawing to force the size conformity, that control would cut off the life line.
This is the push and pull dynamic. It's not about whether I'm drawing from a photo or a screen. It's about the intention and the focus.
These drawings are from a class I did on drawing dancers in movement. There was no single freeze frame pose. The subject was in constant motion. The tutor spoke about calligraphy and imagining the figure like Eastern Asian calligraphic lettering. It's interesting how gestural the lines became. The dancer wasn't in the room. I drew from the screen. But the connection, focus and trying created an output with vitality.
