I enrolled in a life drawing class this semester. It's been a while since I've drawn a living person and I didn't realize how much I'd missed it until I sat down at the easel with my pencil case, measuring, drawing and erasing and drawing again. I hadn't taken an art class since early last year.
Robert moved LIAFA to a new location down the road (in Riverhead) and it's charming. It's in an old office building above a pizzeria and a few other businesses. The new space has tall ceilings, oak floors, is clean and well maintained, and actually has running hot water and a radiator that works. In the old building, we suffered all winter without adequate heat and had to wash our paint brushes in ice cold water, turning my hands numb and white. When I drove in to paint on a Sunday afternoon, I often chattered with the cold as I sat mixing my colors on my palette.
There's much to love about drawing - the feel of the pencil between your fingers, the smooth, creamy surface of the paper, the meditative solace it brings as you strive to capture the curve of the model's back, the gesture of the hands, the turn of the head. I love the comforting quiet of the studio and the mingling odors of paint, charcoal pencils and mineral spirits. Sometimes drawing from life is incredibly frustrating. After a break, it's hard to get the model positioned in exactly the same pose. Sometimes I get a stiff neck or I can't quite capture the pose or work out the proportions. Still, I keep on.
Drawing helps to train the writer's eye. It helps the writer to cultivate patience with himself and his craft. Most artists, like most writers, work hard at what they do. Success often comes slowly after many years of hard work.
Really, isn't that true of anything that requires skill, whether it's wrestling, running, building a piece of furniture, cultivating a garden or composing a poem? Few of us get it right the first time. And that, after all, is makes makes success so sweet when we finally hold it, plump, ripe and juicy, in our own two hands.
