Social Club: Social Club #15 - Drawing a Live Model

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. - John W. Gardner

That quote about sums it up. We sometimes try too hard to live perfect lives, when what we should actually do is just let go. Live life as if you were drawing without an eraser. This was my objective with drawing a live model at Social Club - I wanted everyone to let go of their inhibitions and have fun. That is exactly what we did.

Everyone arrived at lovely Alexander Bar, some new and some old faces. Everyone introduced themselves to each other and made new friends. That's what Social Club is about, meeting new faces and catching up with old friends.

I welcomed everyone and went through the evenings program, which would be wine tasting to start with from MAN Vintners, snacking on canapes and then a live model drawing session.

Jacqui, Alice and Becki

Francois, the winemaker from MAN Vintners, chatted to us about two white and two red wines from their collection. It wasn't easy trying to get 22 ladies quiet so that he could educate us on the wines, but he managed and did a great job. All four wines were really amazing and quite well priced. The best thing was that we didn't get small tasting portions, Francois insisted that you need to taste the wine and then taste it again and again and again. We weren't complaining!

Sarah

Sarah & Bonnie

Jessica

Kristina from Art Attack provided us with some books on how to draw nudes. So everyone paged through the books and there was a nervous anticipation about how the model looks and if they will be able to draw him.

Alex, Vera, Melanie, Keri, Sian

Angie, Natalie, Deseree, Louise, Michelle, Keiley, Nina, Kristina

The person who tweeted the coolest tweet, won a Art Attack hamper

Jessica was the lucky winner!

At the end of the wine tasting, Francois checked if everyone was listening to him and asked who can name one of the wines we tasted. Jacqui got it right and won herself a fine bottle of wine. Well done girl!

After the wine tasting, it was time to move upstairs to draw the live model. I arranged with the model to be at the venue at 19:15, but by 19:30 he was still not there. So I called him and his phone was off. I was shocked and thought that he bailed on us. So my friend offered to pose for us. I shared the horrible news to the ladies and they were all disappointed, but still happy to draw a live model, even though it's not a sexy hunk that they were looking forward to drool over, I mean draw.

So we went upstairs and I was super surprised when the organiser informed me that the model was already there, ready and waiting for us! I was over the moon and so were all the ladies.

The class

Everybody grabbed a chair and their stationary and then we started drawing. I printed out a few tips for drawing a live model and my favourite one was: Look at your model more than your paper!

The first drawing we suggested that everyone draws a loose sketch, just to get a feel for the proportions and shape of the model. The following sketches they could go into more detail.

There were loads of giggling going on and a lot of serious faces too.

Bonnie

Michelle

Melanie

Aimee

At the end of the class everybody placed their drawings on the floor and we had a walk about to check out everybody else's work. Jacqui said that the feet and hands were the hardest to draw, which I think most people found hard too.

Becki & Alice

Keri & Sian

It was such a great evening and I can't wait for the next one! Watch this space. Thanks to Raymond from Mirra Photography for capturing the evenings best moments.