Drawings
Drawings
Drawing seems to be methodical work, like building a wall. When I draw I’m in control. Painting is different, it’s more like juggling.
As a Post Graduate student at the Royal Academy one had to spend the first twelve weeks in the life room drawing from the nude. I imagined that three months drawing was going to be very dry, and something of a trial but by the end of the term I would have been happy to spend ten years in that room with only a pencil and paper.
I began drawing in a scribbly hacked at way with lots of marks and movement (SELF PORTRAIT
from 1981 below).
Norman Blamey RA taught in the Royal Academy Schools Life Room. He once asked me why I used three lines where one would do? It was amongst the best advice I have ever been given.
The RA School hired Life models for a week at the most. I wanted single poses and for much longer; the whole week or weeks when possible, whereas many students wanted short poses. after my initial term in the Life Room I found that, ironically, I could study the human body more intensely by working from the casts of Greek and Roman sculpture that lined the corridor in the School. My drawings became plotted, precise and clinical.
Drawing became the armature within a painting. When I loose the forms that I am trying to build on the canvas I go back to the drawing.
