Sunday, April 15, 2012

Figure Drawing at OCAD

After a poetry meetup group friday night, with an open mic, and a post-poetry pub visit, I dragged myself off to OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) the next morning for a drop-in figure drawing session. I carried a large board with a canvas sheet taped to it, my large drawing pad, 2 sets of paints, watercolour and acrylic, brushes, water jars, palette, etc. since I had been unable to determine in Internet searches if OCAD offered a long pose or not.

Unfortunately, it was a typical life drawing session, beginning with half a dozen 1 minute poses, then onto 3 - 5 minute ones, a few 10 minute, and ending with two 20 minute poses. A format I do not enjoy, and I would not have gone if I had known. So many poses of such short duration do not work for me, and I now look for sessions with longer poses.

Because I had a few things to do downtown (like visit my favourite art store, Above Ground Art Supplies), I ended up walking home, trudging 4km loaded like an elephant. All in all, very exhausting.

Still, in the posts to follow, you will see that I am working very hard to turn these pages into viable paintings.

These were all done in charcoal on 18" x 24" 90lb archival paper.

(ps. The paper is bright white - I took the photos late and it was cloudy, not enough light for my iPhone camera.)









brendaclews.com

2 comments:

  1. Hi Brenda,

    Thanks for the feedback regarding the drop-in Life Drawing sessions at OCAD University. We will be including a description of the format of these sessions in our website listings so that future participants are aware before they come to the sessions.

    My best,

    Stacy Kelly
    Manager, OCAD U Alumni Relations
    ocadu.ca/alumni

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Stacy, incredible that you found this post so quickly! I'm impressed. The session was fine, pose lengths the norm for most life drawing. And your calendar does clearly state which days are the 'painting' sessions with a long pose. I guess for that reason I had assumed there would be some painters there, and that, therefore, there would be longer poses. So it would definitely help if you added a description - a couple of other people on Facebook (where I learned of OCAD's alumni sessions) were trying to find out too since TSA had an open house last weekend & we were looking for other figure drawing venues. Had I known, I likely would have come anyhow, but not brought a whole wack of painting supplies along with my drawing ones. Thank you so much for dropping by, and leaving a comment. Glad it'll help others who are looking for figure drawing sessions in Toronto.

      Delete

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