Summary

In the final class we'll continue with some more poses of the sort shown below. 

At the very bottom I've posted some notes on a couple of the ideas we looked at last week, and have included some links.

In the final class I'll also make a final pitch for the idea of drawing figures utilizing archetypal poses, or refering to them obliquely.  You can, of course, simply draw from great works of visual art and film, and collect an inventory of drawings in both sketch books and your minds eye.  However, perhaps you...and me for that matter...can start to make suggestions for some meaningful poses at life drawing groups.  It won't always be possible.  But many models will actually be thrilled to become actors rather than just a meaningless arrangement of limbs on a podium.  You might bring a rough sketch (as one of us did), of an archetypal pose or your own pose idea, to a life drawing session and see if you can convince the model...and the other artists, to draw from the arrangement.

I hope this workshop has been as interesting an experiment for you as for me.  I 30 or more years of life drawing it has never occurred to me to pose a model in a meaningful way.  Despite years of looking at figurative artwork and the carefully constructed poses within them, I have shown up at life drawing and done my bit to simply arrange the model as you might arrange flowers in a jar.

In those 30 years of life drawing I have never seen a model take a crucifiction pose.  Or an Aphrodite.  Or as though they are dead.  Or as Spiderman.  I've also never seen an artist show up to life drawing with a rough sketch of a pose that she would like to see and then arrange the model to match her vision, as one of our number did. 

This workshop was a bit of an experiment, and I hope you found it at least partly as interesting as I did.  Some of the quality and power found in your drawing may have been derived from the efforts of our models to express archetypal poses.

Wing-ed Figures

Adonis

Personification in the Figure

Many God-Figures in so-called primative religions are personifacations of natural forces or attributes of human nature. LIkewise in visual art, dance, film and literature.  Entities that appear to be a figure or character might actually represent some more powerful force.   Reclining figures in ancient sculpture are often River Gods.  Figures hanging in the air with puffed cheeks are personifications of the wind.  Skeletal figures might represent death.  Many personifications represent place.  Gods of Groves, streams, boulders. 

Personification in the western painting tradition might seem old school, but it is still a frequently used device.  A couple of examples.

Japanese Shintoism apparently utilizes many Gods of place, of vegetable, of mineral.  Anyone familiar with the Anime films of Hayao Miyazaki will recognise an abundance of God-Figure personifacations.  View the trailer for Mayasaki's Spirited Away HERE.

Above is a still from an advert called Mr. W. This marvellous ad never fails to amuse and delight me.  The use of personification might be ancient but here's a wonderful example used to communicate an idea in a thoroughly modern medium.

View Mr. W HERE.

The Peita

Massing of Posed Figures

Many paintings from the European painting tradition use the massing of many, sometimes dozens, of carefully posed figures.  These paintings create the effect of frozen theatre.  We've touched upon the posing of multiple figures by carefully posing and drawing one model, and then carefully posing and drawing the model again as a seperate figure in the same image.  It would be difficult and expensive to hire, arrange and draw 3, 5, 10 or a cast of thousands of posed figures.  Traditional painters might have had more than one model in their studios, but they must have created these paintings with a large cast of figures by meticulously posing, studying and painting indivudual figures before inserting them in the final rendering.

The idea of having enormous casts of characterers, carefully posed in paintings, or, in moving pictures and theatre, choreographed, is still an enormously valuable means of expression today.  Above is the huge painting by David of The Raft of the Medusa.  Compare the effect of a large cast of posed figures to the large cast of posed and choreographed figures in the Guinness ad called Dreamer by Jonathon Glazer.

You can view a long version of the ad Dreamer HERE.

Assembling and orchestrating a large cast of characters in film must still be a large and daunting task, even in comparison to enormous figurative artistic efforts such as the Sisine Chapel. However, many hands make light(er) work in film.  The Russian 'tour de force' of filmmaking Russian Ark assembled it's whole cast; some 2000 actors; and filmed them in one stunning scene.  No cuts.  No blinking of the camera.  No retakes.  Like the Sistine Chapel, a work of art but with a cast of thousands rather than hundreds; probably one of the most amazing films ever made.

You can view the trailer of Russian Ark HERE.

You can view all of the short CG movie World Builder HERE.

You can visit the Cumberland Lifers blog to get contact info on life drawing groups in the Valley HERE.