When photography came along in the mid-nineteenth century one would have assumed that it would have freed the artist of the need to exactly copy the subject. The camera can better define individual strands of hair and every leaf on a tree. But one hundred and fifty years on it has ironically worked the other way around. In reviewing the current state of the art I find that most aspiring artists copy from photographs down to the last hair follicle and blade of grass. Furthermore, whereas once it was the artist that worked from the live model, it is now the photographer and the artist is content to minutely copy from the photograph. How boring can life get!
Granted, working from life can be an difficult business: the wind blows, the rain falls and the model wilts. Once, when I had set up my stall for painting a market scene on the Caribbean island of Grenada, a dog came along and drank the water from my containers. At least on that occasion, my onlookers were friendly enough to replenish my supply. But the same support wasn't forthcoming when I was painting the dark satanic mills in my native industrial north of England. On that bleak winter afternoon, a group of young boys took delight in raining stones down on me. In comparison, painting from the nude figure in the warmth of a tropical afternoon sounds idyllic, and it is - until ants and mosquitoes begin eating my model.
Nevertheless, against all those set backs, the only way that I can convincingly capture life is to work from life. Although life-classes have begun to proliferate, the lessons learnt appear to go no further than the classroom door. To find out how different are the life-classes that I teach from my studio from the normal run of things, turn to page 26 in my book Notes on the Nude.
The opening and closing sketches are demonstrations that I did for my life class students. Both were made in less than a minute and the first is on a 16" x 20" sheet of newsprint.
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