Remote Connections : New Opportunities

Welcome, I’m glad you’re here.

Recently I've begun working from the figure again. It has been on my mind to return to the figure in my imagery. I had researched drawing groups around town and then COVID took over. It seemed as if drawing and working from a live model was not to be for 2020. I happily found out otherwise.

Oddly, this pandemic has turned out to be a perfect opportunity to follow this muse. In March 2020 I started doing some online figure drawing sessions hosted by a local sculptor. That in turn led to an online class on sketching the figure in Gouache. I have also found more online drawing sessions throughout the week with an online group of models known as Distanced Drawing. (distanceddrawing.com/@distanceddrawing.) If you are interested in figure drawing please look them up. What they have created is really quite fantastic

At first, I did not imagine this would work as well as it does. For me, it has turned out to be the right thing at the right time. The models are a group of NYC Dancers, Circus and Aerial performers. Currently, they are unable to perform at live events due to COVID restrictions. So with the help and coordination of artist Hanna Mandelbaum, they have set up a schedule of online drawing sessions. Each session has its own individual touches. The sessions reflect each performers’ skills and combine various session formats with long and short poses. There are sessions with an aerial/circus arts focus, a movement session, a variety of costume themes and, classic nude figure study sessions.

The opportunity to work with such skilled and graceful performers is amazing. And far and above what you find at most figure drawing sessions. The costumes, camera work, and lighting they bring to the sessions are amazing. As dancers and performers, they have stage presence, they’re graceful and strong. For example, one model stood on Pointe for a full 20 min pose.

Now I want to go back and talk a little more about Gouache. I love it, it’s opaque…!!! sounds silly but hear me out. If you do not know of Gouache it is an opaque artist's watercolor. This is important for a few reasons, to start with it is very portable, and only needs water for thinning and clean up, (read also as “no solvents”). Additionally, it’s available in a wide range of high-quality colors, and it is opaque enough to paint over earlier layers of work. With relatively short drying times it’s easy to make broad changes in a relatively short amount of time. allowing you to easily paint-over, correct and refine your work in a single session/workday.

You can apply gouache as a thin wash of transparent color, yet as you continue to work, it is opaque enough to layer up and build color on top of color. This also leads to some very interesting color and texture relationships. Gouache pigments are also vibrant enough to work very well against a colored ground. This makes hand-tinted paper, or colored paper/card stock a great surface for painting on. However, possibly the best trait of being opaque is, that with gouache you can paint up to your highlights. This is vastly different than working in watercolor where saving the white of the paper is used for creating the highlights. In this way, it behaves much like oil colors without the long drying time.

I have really enjoyed exploring a different medium, I believe it has added a new dimension to my work. Discovering new opportunities to work from the figure has been a blessing in these tough times. There is something so evocative about drawing the human form, it has been great to embrace that study again.

I think we all have had to find new ways of doing things. Thank you for allowing me the time to share this experience. Again, if you are interested in trying one of their drawing sessions you can find the details at www.distanceddrawing.com or @distanceddrawing.

As always thank you for joining me here, 

Jamie