Blogging!

The idea of starting an art blog just came to me, and there is no time like the present to get started! I’m going to use this blog to talk about my various artistic activities, be it life drawing, learning to paint, going to art fairs/ exhibitions etc. This way you can follow along with my journey and I can talk about things in more detail than on social media.

I went life drawing last night for my second time at an LGBT architecture life drawing group. My friend Ventsi kindly invited me along, and we spent the evening eating charcuterie and drawing. Basically my idea of heaven. 

There was a period of almost 3 years post-pandemic where I didn’t do any life drawing - I would draw regularly for my job, but it was all done digitally. Since getting back to things, I’ve really tried to be more adventurous - I used to only use charcoal, which while an excellent medium to draw with, can often be quite dull and academic. So I’ve started to use acrylic pens more and more. They’re colourful and exciting, and also demand a level of confidence in mark making which I’ve found really liberating. I actually fear fucking up a drawing less, because the permanence of the pens means I just have to move on and make the drawing work anyway. What this has taught me is that mistakes often aren’t as fatal as we fear, and confidence/ creativity can compensate for what is lacking in technical accuracy.

Acrylic markers also lend themselves really well to drawing/ line-focused work, which also makes them very versatile, as many life drawing groups don’t have the best lighting. That would often frustrate me when working in charcoal, but now it really doesn’t matter at all, as I can bring interest to the image through creative colour choices and linework. 

Something I really like about this group is how social it is. We all put our work in a big pile at the end and get to see the wide variety of interpretations. When life drawing previously, I would just turn up, draw, then pack up and leave. I saw it purely as a technical exercise. Now, I’m learning to appreciate how nice it is to be able to meet other art enthusiasts, regardless of their ability, and share our love of what is now a niche activity.

So many people abandon their creativity (everyone has it) at an early age, and are often afraid to reclaim it out of fear of not being "good", or thinking drawing is for kids. I could go on a long rant about how our society crushes creativity out of us in the pursuit of efficiency, or social media making everyone insecure about sharing anything less-than-perfect. But I’ll save that for another time. And it’s so nice spending time with people who have held onto their artistic flair despite this. 

Afterwards Vensti, his boyfriend Ben and I went for walk around The Barbican at night and visited the bar. It’s times like these I really appreciate living in London, and all the amazing sites and people there are here.