Modeling

Hello my friends!

The other day we encountered a beautiful Chinook wind all day, and today it snowed. A bitter, cold, horrible snow. It made me grumpy.

So today I wanted to talk about modeling. As artists who partake in drawing classes every semester, there is a lot of emphasis on the human form. We focus on portraits and also life drawing, and in order to do that the instructors have to hire people, both men and women, to come in and pose nude for us to draw. The first time I had to draw a nude I was quite excited but also nervous. To my surprise though it turned out to feel like a very natural thing. Obviously because of our society I have encountered my fair share of naked people. Be it because of Game of Thrones or even your basic media advertisements, it's not something you can really avoid. So this wasn't like the first time I'd ever seen a naked person. And drawing him was very interesting, and I learned a lot after even the first session.

So we had a man for our first session. Since then we've only had women, which I prefer, just because they're prettier to draw. I started to become quite fascinated with the world of modeling. It's not something that happens every day, and there is a very clear separation of sexuality and art that you see happen when the model takes off his or her robe. When the model is up there and you're drawing her, there is absolutely nothing sexual about it, and that fascinates me. Why is that? Why do we see them differently? How are we able to instinctively separate ourselves? My only explanation is that what we're doing is art. The model is there in the name of art. And, if done right, art isn't meant to be sexually explicit or perverse. This is something that every good artist should experience in order to make them better. Help them see better, help them be able to express themselves, and it's especially impactful because what the models do is quite taboo in society. It's always been a taboo subject, throughout the centuries. It's perhaps more commonly accepted these days because of what our society experiences through the media, but it's still a relatively unheard of idea. Someone being nude in front of a group of students so they can study her and draw her. But it's a magical thing.

To be that free, at the same time being exposed and vulnerable, coupled with the knowledge that you're helping fellow artists become stronger in their craft, and still considered with respect, is such an amazing combination. I mean, it's very very easy to look at it completely separately: here's a person and they're standing there with no clothes on and we're drawing her as accurately as possible. Sure, done. But there's a whole emotional side to it, that I never before realized. A side full of trust and commitment, with both parties (the model and the students) exercising maturity and respect.

This is one of the reasons why I think Visual Arts and Psychology are born to be intertwined. You can't really have an experience with visual arts if you don't involve your mind and your spirit. And usually there's an association between the art and something else, which always dives deeper into a person's mind. That is to say, art gives you the feels which have a deeper root somewhere in your subconscious. In this particular case, it isn't the art that gives me the emotion, but it's the model; the still life that we have to draw. The object of our picture and what she must be feeling, what she must be thinking, and the skill it takes to sit in the same position for over an hour. What a life. I love it.

I'm going to turn this picture into a painting at some point in my life. Photo credit: Me.