INTRODUCTION

After a long hiatus I started doing painting again a couple of years ago. I'm basically a figurative artist and drawing is absolutely basic to my work and by extension to painting in general.

At the Atlanta School of Art there was a wonderful teacher named Joel Reeves. He taught drawing and painting in such a way that I never felt any disconnect between the two. Drawing was from the figure and was based on a method found in a book; The Natural Way To Draw" by Nicoliades. Later in graduate school at Tulane University we had to take a non-credit drawing course based on the same. I taught figure drawing for several years at various institutions and again used the same principles.

It's all about learning to see. Seeing what a figure, or other object, is doing and what it is.

What "it's doing" falls to gesture drawing where you move quickly through the figure trying to express the movement, thrust of the figure. What it "is" falls to contour drawings, modeled drawings and other exercises that define the shape and form of the figure.

I was pleased to find the Downtown Figure Drawing Group at Space 301 this year. In an effort to get the rust off, the first 3 or 4 weeks were pretty bad but things came around somewhat and the last couple of sessions there have been a few good things. The setup there is condusive to gesture drawings but not real contours or maybe my eyes are just getting old.

Gesture Drawings from the winter session

This gesture really shows what the figure is doing. The little sketch to the left just happened because the pose ran a little long.

These are just basic gesture drawings.

It's taken some time to figure out this process but J.B., a very nice person, was a great help. I think putting the pictures in first from now on will be smart.