Life Drawing At The Royal Drawing School

I'm back at the Royal Drawing School this term for a life drawing class on Monday evenings. It's taught by Sharon Brindle who long-time readers of this blog will remember from The Contemporary Portrait five-day class I took in July.

The first class on Monday was very hands-off with just enough instruction from Sharon who walks around the room all night giving hints and advice. It's nice and relaxing, drawing for a few hours in the evening after work, especially now with the days getting shorter. When it's dark outside and the lights are dim with just a spotlight on the model in the center, it's very easy to fall into a meditative flow. Here are some more charcoal drawings I made that night:

I'm very happy with all of these, especially the drawing at the top of this post. It felt so much easier measuring, changing the drawing, gauging proportions and drawing what I see than even a few weeks ago. I've been doing an online class from Vitruvian Studio and an in-person class at the London Fine Art Studios, both of which I haven't blogged about yet, and I feel like Monday was one of those days when all the progress of several week crystallizes and becomes visible. Truly a great experience.

It got me thinking about how, even though I have goals of things I want to be able to paint and artists whose work I admire, when I draw or paint, every drawing and every painting feels like an achievement. Even though I'm a beginner and it's easy to see the shortcomings of my abilities, I mostly enjoy the experience and tend to feel proud of how I've improved rather than seeing the ways my drawings fall short. Although there are times of frustration, when I was hoping for more or when I feel like I could've done better, most of the time, drawing feels exciting, engaging and experimental.

Not all the projects I pursue in my life feel this way and there seems to be a strong correlation between having this sense of wonder and eventually getting good at what I'm doing. I remember that learning to code felt similarly when I was in high school, as did learning Chinese later in my 20s. I wonder if there's a way to change my approach to some of the goals I haven't been able to reach yet to make them feel more like drawing.