Wednesday Night Drawing

I first moved into the circle of the Wednesday Night Drawing Group in 1978 about one year after I graduated from Pratt. The group had already been meeting on Wednesday nights to share a model and camaraderie for a number of years at that point. It's still going. Some people have retired from the group while others have passed on. I have moved in and out of its sphere depending on available time and geography. This time I've been back for nearly 2 years.

A binding happens when people make art together over a long period of time. Many in the group are long-time friends outside of the group. I am not one of them. But even if we don't know a lot about a member in that personal way, you can tell a lot about someone by the work they do. I call it the Wednesday Night Drawing Group but the Wednesday Night Group is a more accurate description because at least half of the people paint. As members of the Monmouth County Art Alliance, we are permitted to rent the large studio behind our storefront gallery for the same 2 hours each week for six-month blocks. We hire a model who takes a pose for the entire 2 hours--with appropriate breaks of course.

My first encounter with this group was as a model. At the time I was not a figurative artist--I was creating large, 3 dimensional wall pieces of balsa wood, handmade Japanese paper and water color--very delicate and very large. I was, however, fascinated by this group that drew from a single pose for the entire session. The longest pose any model had struck at Pratt was 20 minutes.

A few years later, when my foray into abstraction was extinguished by my insatiable need to convey narrative through drawing, I sought out this group and found the ability to bring a drawing to resolution a welcome exercise.

Even though I have never developed paintings from any of the drawings created in the Wednesday night group, the work of drawing--of sharpening my hand-eye coordination, of handling various materials and developing a fineness of my favorite element--line--informed all of the other work I did.

Despite all my years of experience, I am amazed that I still have difficulty with proportions -- I can render a beautiful mixture of line and tone that is either delicate or strong, depending on my mood that at first glance has the look of an "old master" work in red conte. It's the second look that makes it clear that the head is totally too big for the body--or the hands are far too small. I won't notice this, of course, until I'm done. It is humbling. I learn.