Bigger and sleeker and whiter and brighter

What a week! What can I tell you about my drawing class? So many things.

It was all in charcoal, ‘drawing from the imagination’, no fruit sitting demurely, no model cold on cushions, lots of quick sketches and collage and composition. Teacher a practicing artiste – in prints, charcoal and watercolour.

The teacher:
Looked like BSharp’s dad. From London, sounded a bit like Jamie Oliver but less waxing lyrical about beefheart tomatoes and more use of rock music metaphor.

‘That’s alchemy, yeah?’ he said.

‘I don’t care what you like or don’t like’. ‘You can leave your expectations at the door. It’s about the drawing, what works for the drawing, not your preconceptions.’

‘This drawing is ok on the bass, but needs more violins – you know what I mean?’

‘it’s about commitment – commitment to the drawing. Sometimes you talk to the drawing, sometimes the drawing talks to you. Sometimes the drawing sings and you can hear it sing.’

‘You’ve lost the energy’ he said ‘now you’re all just doing it like the tick the box coz it’s something the teacher told you to do. Where was that energy you had before? I want that back.’

‘I want to see commitment, see you reach resolution.’

The place:
Enclosed and stone, rounded walls and small courtyards. An intimate space, but big, deceptively big. Enfolded, buildings, corridors, grounds. Convict hewn stone. High ceilings, sky-lights, exposed beams. Felt like Hogwarts.

My day:
I stand at the biggest piece of paper that I have ever drawn on and I stand very close like it is a lover and we are somewhere dark. I hold charcoal in one hand and in the other hand I clutch at the side of the chipboard and paper, the whole thing resting on the easel, my hand securing it, binding us together. Sometimes when I shade things round I stand with my face close to the paper so that I can peer down from where I imagine the light to be coming, to see whether my shading is right.
When I loose connection and lose faith I scowl at the drawing and stand arms length back, I poke at it, scratch at it, go back and forth without conviction. When I am back in the process and have lost that barrier of scorn and doubt I go in close, I sit on the floor with my tights and my skirt on the charcoal dusted lino and draw from beneath, I peer in, I stand on tippie-toes, I hold off going to the toilet, putting it off, ‘in a minute, in a minute’. I like some graph of a learner, go in peaks and plateaus of satisfaction, one minute the barest sketch makes me happy and pleased with myself, the next a whole day’s work looks pale and unconvincing. Ridges, steppes, baby steps.

Later I look at my skin and marvel that through tights I have charcoal highlighted knees, and that my forarms have the kind of grime you imagine of old newly industrial England.

The people:
A funny bunch. Mostly older women, with funky hair cuts and interesting accessories. A writer, an interior designer, a painter, make that two, a librarian, a television producer, an art teacher, an art therapist, a full time art student, and two teenagers whose parents made them go. And me.

Some I don’t like, don’t like straight away in that way that you feel embarrassed about, that very primal, crotch sniffing (I didn’t, I’m just saying) way. One smiles too thinly, is too attached to having been to one of these workshops already, her smile grows thinner as time wears on. The other is rough, gruff and lacks warmth. I think. That’s just me.

Others are great, they emerge from the mists of random names and faces that you get as an impression at the beginning and emerge through the week as solid characters with names each and families you now know about and plans for drawing rooms, and novels half written and stories, and laughs and suggestions. They have a feel about them, like their drawings. Some are sweet, some are all highs and air, some are little girl like but also solid and decisive, others are willowy thin and druidic.

The process:
Not much really not much for a week I guess, but there are exercises, and collages to make and redrawing to do. I learn how to hold charcoal so that it can be crisp and hard and soft and wide and thin. Willow charcoal, compressed charcoal and synthetic charcoal, I get to know their densities and their softness, how they smudge and how they outline. I use a rubber and see how light can be retrofitted onto dark. I use thick thick paper that is textured and feels ancient like a linen or papyrus. I thin of the word palimpset after I draw and erase and draw and rub back the same space over and over.

I love the time that I start to think round, and shading becomes a tracing of what you see, rather than a constructing of an artificial reality. I love thinking 'where would the moon's light go'? And feeling moonlight tracting objects as I smooth over them with a hard plastic rubber and make them whiter, lighter, lit up.

The work:
‘That's a beautiful horse’.
‘Dog’
‘Oh, dog.’