So I’m taking the introductory figure drawing class at UCLA Extension, with Joseph Blaustein. I’ve taken this class before, with a different teacher, (I’ve also taken Joe’s intermediate and advanced classes), but I’m really lucky to be able to take it a second time. It’s so worth doing it again.
Joe’s one of my favorite teachers, ever, and if you live in Los Angeles and you are interested in figure drawing, you’d be doing yourself a big favor to sign up for one of his classes.
Watching the progress of my classmates is amazing. People’s work is growing tremendously and it’s only the second week so far. I noticed a change on the first day – between the first and second rounds of drawing. It’s impressive and inspiring how fast it happens, and that kind of thing you can only blame on Joe. A working artist, he manages to create a safe place to play and explore, but the thing that’s priceless is that he finds the perception or style unique to each artist.
The thing that’s catching me, though – is that most of the students are unaware of their progress. They have no idea how much they’re learning, they can’t see how far they’re progressing. They don’t know because they’re so deep in the middle of it.
When you’re driving down the freeway, things don’t change so fast. It doesn’t look so different whether you’re driving 20MPH or 80MPH. You’re focused on the horizon, not on how quickly the roadside trees are zooming past. Everyone can see how fast you’re moving, except you.
This class is just like that. I’m learning and growing, but this time it’s at a slightly slower pace. Now I also have the privilege of watching the progress, because it’s not new to me – I’ve done a lot of this before, so I’m seeing all the growth that’s happening around me much more closely. It is happening and it is incredible.
Between breaks, I chat with the other people in the class. They are focused on the exercises, and while I try to keep to the basic excercises, I certainly play around more.
Today I was chatting with some classmates, and someone said something slightly wistful, I don’t remember what exactly. It doesn’t really matter, but it made me suddenly realize, they don’t know! THEY DON’T SEE IT YET! They don’t even know how much they’re learning. They don’t know how good they’re getting. They have no idea – when you’re moving that fast and staying that focused, you are not watching the trees on the side of the road.
That little leap made me further realize, not so long ago, THAT WAS ME! And I didn’t see it – the growth was there, and I definitely felt it (it felt great), but at the time, I didn’t have any clue how much and how fast. Sometimes you can’t recognize it in yourself until you see it in someone else. The realization floored me, because suddenly I got it. I realized I’ve been growing, and growing a lot.
There was a moment for me, when the ceiling cracked wide open and let the endless sky shine through. And this is how it happened: Once, I happily spent hours and hours focused on a single drawing. I would start a single drawing, and put everything into it. I’d be devastated to smudge a line, or later realize a little proportion was off. I was precious about everything I did. I didn’t do drafts, I knew where I wanted to do before I started. It was the most paralyzing approach I could have taken.
The first figure drawing teacher I had was not a bad person, nor was he a bad teacher, but he would, once in a while, pop out with something like “Ooooh. You should just stop, now, and call that done. Because that’s pretty good, and if you did something else you might mess it up.”
I was at Joe’s class today and I was down to my last three sheets of paper, so I had to maximize space on the page. I was using soft vine charcoal, and for the last few sets of poses, I just wiped away each drawing after I finished it. A few of them were, I think, not so bad, and at one point as the figure met the chamois cloth, someone said “Oh, you don’t have to wipe that away!”
Aside from the part about having no more paper, I realized I’d made it to a whole new place. I wasn’t precious about my work, anymore, not even a little. Smudges happen, things don’t always go in the controlled, careful way you’d like. Just like life, drawing is transitory, and sometimes the smudges are the best part. There’s no reason to be precious. If I can’t do another drawing again, one that’s just as good, then it was an accident, and that means it probably isn’t worth keeping as a representation of my ability. And maybe that’s the biggest breakthrough so far.
