“….The next pose will be for 40 minutes…so plenty of time…” These words fill me with dread. It is not the fault of the tutor or the course but rather more of problem, if that is the correct word, of myself. You see I’ve reached the point in my artistic career, such as it is, where I need to take my time. I don’t need time limits but the space and time to work on something to get it right and no course is ever going to give you that. Even life drawing sessions are far too short to do anything other than a preliminary sketch.

Of course it can be argued that this was not a problem in the past and the great masters managed to produce master pieces in such short amounts of time. This argument is, of course, totally without merit. Now I’m not saying that I will ever reach anything like the levels of the past masters and quit frankly I’m not sure I want to but what I do need to produce my best work is time. This is not what you get on any of these courses

Is there a solution to this dilemma? Of course there are but I also feel I do still need to attend these courses from time to time to keep refreshing my skills and, in a very masochistic sort of a way, embrace the frustrations that come with it. You can only do so much in such an amount of time.

Simon Marchini
http://www.simonmarchini.co.uk