I went along to Peter Kavanaghs' life drawing workshop, accompanied by Jacqui and June, who had never done anything like it before.
It was fabulous, with Peter packing in as much as possible in the meagre two hours.
Firstly, he had us drawing the model as we would normally go about it.
I wasn't happy with my first effort because I had the hand far too big, but looking now I had captured her stance better than my second go.
The next task was to draw without looking at the paper, to concentrate on looking and seeing without worrying about the resulting drawing.
Then draw again, aiming to produce an accurate line drawing by really looking at the model..
Peter then showed us another technique which he called gestural drawing. This was to block in the overal mass of the body, to get the gesture of it, and then go back in with detail. I loved this bit best. I'm always happier working with charcoal, rather than pencil.
This one is my favourite, and I would have loved more time on it. I always used to work this way.....why did I forget?
It was fantastic to get back to basics, to remind me how much I love life drawing. My thanks to Peter, a gifted tutor, and to fabulous model, Becky, beautiful and elegant.
Peter is running a one day workshop at the beginning of Dec which I'm excitedly anticipating will be brilliant!
