A plein air watercolour landscape of Whangarei Heads with children. Note
how they center the eye in the composition. A hot day and my brush was
full of sand.
twenty minutes. A fine bronzed mature male model, one of the old
school - he had been Mr Universe in 1935. I moved around clockwise
and came to white haired Lorna quietly sitting on her donkey, her
drawing board vertical in front of her. Prim and proper, this usual ball
of activity was quite still. Not a mark on her pristine sheet of paper. I
asked - is everything OK? She said yes, I am fine. But we have been
going ten minutes and you haven’t started I said. She looked at me
with a quiet smile and replied, “well, you told us that Reg was 78 and
had been Mr Universe. I said yes. She continued with a smile, Dougie
“I am 78 as well - and I just wanted to look!” Bless her, what a lady.
A mature friend who volunteered to
model, part of her bucket list, she offered
because she was rejected at art school
A recent 12 minute conté drawing of Sue at Kauri Mountain, Northland. 40 years before. Oil on paper.
So fortunately, even at my age sometime we can be
turned on in a pleasant and complimentary way -
there is life after 35.
I truly believe the naked human body is the
best process to study drawing, understanding your
subject and knowing how to deal with perspective
in particular. It combines all the essential skills to
draw anything, the skeletal structure, the bundles of
muscles attached to lengthen or shorten, the ability to
mass tones. I try for three only: dark, medium and the
white of the paper, and of course parts of the body
appear larger or smaller than they really are because
of perspective. A foot or hand in close-up may be
much larger than a head on paper. Of course every
teacher has their own way of working so expect many
views of how and where to start.
Life drawing is very much more than a study of
analysis. Sir Kenneth Clark said, “The nude is not a
subject of art but a form of art”.
On your next empty landscape try to introduce
a small clothed figure walking the beach perhaps -
remember it will become the point of focus or interest
immediately. The essential thing is to give the overall
feeling of a believable live fluid figure - maybe quite
roughly painted but balanced, the weight on one, or
both feet, that pensive or jubilant moment, running
or just standing on a hilltop. Winslow Homer a
favourite American artist of mine who I researched
years ago in Prouts Neck Connecticut was so good in
combining both figures and landscape. His work is
worth a look, among many. He often used a maquette