Dulwich OnView

Suddenly, life drawing is trendy. Classes have sprung up across London; Radio 4’s Front Row investigated the phenomenon, and Channel 4 has run ‘live’ life drawing classes in the afternoon, with artists like Maggie Hambling providing the expertise. Dulwich, of course, has long been ahead of the curve, as Anna Sayburn explains.

I went along to one of Dulwich Picture Gallery’s popular life drawing classes for three consecutive evenings last year, with tutor Luke Jones. Not having picked up a pencil since school, it felt like a bit of a leap, but I was curious.

One of my life class drawings

The class was a mixture of art students wanting to brush up their drawing, amateurs improving their skills, and a few beginners, like me. However, as we went round the room introducing ourselves and our experience, I felt surprisingly nervous and out of my depth.

I needn’t have worried. Everyone was friendly, and far too immersed in their own work to have time to laugh at my efforts. I began attempting a charcoal outline of the model’s lovely curves – only to be told by Luke to avoid lines, and to attempt to model the body with patches of dark and light, shade and highlight.

Much harder, but eventuallyI began to get the hang of  it. It felt closer to modelling in clay than drawing on paper, as we moved quickly through some five minute ‘warm-up’ poses – for us or for the model, I wondered?

One surprise was how quickly one got over the slight shock of seeing an adult stranger standing naked before a class of people, all gazing intently at her. There was no embarrassment, but a great deal of respect for the model, who quietly and efficiently switched from pose to pose, holding them with perfect stillness and grace.

The hours flew by, tiring yet never boring. I was amazed how absorbing it is to try to create that connection between hand and eye, to translate the image from the retina to the page, via the mind’s eye. Frustrating, too, when you can see that something about your drawing is wrong, but you can’t spot why. That’s when the tutor comes into his own, pointing out that you’ve shifted slightly so your perspective is now different from that you began with, or you’ve miscalculated the scale so a leg looks too short compared with the body.

It made me realise how rarely we actually look at something in everyday life. A quick glance, to confirm that everything is roughly as expected; a vague impression while our thoughts are elsewhere – but when you are really looking, concentrating hard on everything your eye can register, it absorbs all your concentration. I stopped fretting about my lack of experience, wondering what to have for dinner, trying to work out what to do about a work problem. All that mattered was looking properly, mapping the landscape of the body, and conveying those impressions the best I could. I began to realise that at least half of drawing is simply looking.

By the end of the course, I had a few chalk drawings I felt reasonably pleased with, although I don’t think I’ll be challenging Maggie Hambling. I’d stopped automatically thinking ‘Oh, I can’t draw,’ a thought I’d somehow picked up during school art classes. But more importantly, I’d started to learn to look properly, a skill that has hugely increased my enjoyment of visiting art exhibitions, among other things, ever since.

To find out more about art classes at Dulwich Picture Gallery, see  http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/education/public_courses.aspx