drawing from life

Went to my first life drawing class in eight years. Boy, was that challenging. For one thing, the models were clad rather than naked and I had never tried to draw drapery before. Also, they were never still. The organisers of this local class had asked a hairdresser who operates across the road to bring his barber’s chair and give someone a haircut, on the dais, so that we could sketch them. He had mutton chop whiskers down the one side of his face and on the other temple the tattoo of a flame, which very much resembled a matching sideburn. When he took his shirt off for the longer poses people gasped. Rioting pin-up girls and 50s bathing beauties disported themselves on shoulders and back. I fingered my unpierced earlobes uneasily. How do people get up the nerve to do that to themselves?

Our barber seemed to regard tattoo decisions as some kind of impulse buy. He pointed out one and another that he had thought better of; one arm was almost entirely blacked over to rid him of some ‘tribal’ tatts he no longer wanted. He’s going to get it drawn over again with white ink. I didn’t know you could do that. His hair was immaculately waxed and the volunteer, once done, looked natty too. Gorgeous boys. I was drawing and drawing. Trying to get the hang of it. Remembering snippets my last teacher had told us: like, Don’t draw the outline, the outline doesn’t exist. Draw the bulk, the heft, the volume, the weight. Because we were seated in the round people ended up as backdrops in one another’s drawings. At the break everybody got up and circled, pointing out pieces they likes and taking photographs. Slowly it dawned on me some of our efforts would be mounted on the group’s Facebook page. Last time I drew, phones were not smart. Facebook didn’t exist. There was no one to hear you in space when you screamed with frustration at the immense difficulty of the line, that doesn’t exist, the weight and the heft, which must be almost felt as much as seen, and the flicking sound one’s eyes make reading the page and then the figure, the figure then the page.