If you find charcoal drawings inaproppriate, you should really consider your life. Happy Saturday!

I make odd choices at life drawing sessions.  Sometimes, I frame things strangely.

Sometimes I have extra time at the end of the pose, so I draw feet.

Sometimes I forget that I’ve drawn on the back of a page and a fairly good drawing gets covered in blue smudges.  Planning, I has it.

Sometimes I draw things I quite like.

Sometimes I’m surprisingly minimal.

And occasionally I draw clothes.

There’s no point to this, really — just stuff I did that I feel like sharing.  That being said, I have a pet peeve which I shall naturally rant briefly about.  When I was in grad school students would wander by when I was working on renderings or homework or just dicking around with a pencil and say something along the lines of, “How do you do that?  I can’t draw at all.”  Then I inevitably ask how often they practice, or if they’ve taken anatomy, or if they’ve tried life drawing, and they say that they don’t draw because they’re not good at it, so it’s no fun.  Anyone else see the problem there?  Nobody leaps out of the womb with a skill.  Yes, some people may be more talented than others, but anyone can learn to be better at drawing, and particularly drawing humans, with three basic rules.

1. Learn some anatomy.  You don’t have to know the names, but you should be able to picture bones and muscles and how they connect.  In my case, 18 years of dancing took care of the bulk of that, along with a Visible Man & Woman toy and basic scholarship.

2. Draw naked people.  Clothed is not the same.  Underwear is not the same.  If you can’t draw a nude body, you can’t draw a clothed one.

3.  Draw all the damned time.  Then draw some more.  Even if you’re just doodling, freaking draw.

The end.