This Seat's Been Taken

All 20 minute poses from Kelly. We drew her last night, too, and she is consistently excellent.

I was a tad late last night (5 minutes), and all the easels were taken. Alex set me up on a chair configured like a drawing horse, which was wonderful of her, but I truly prefer to stand. I can't get far enough away from the drawing while sitting down. I need to sight-size as a whole in order to lay in the initial structure. It is far easier to adjust one's drawing in the early stages.

This is why I used to make all my students stand when working from life. Some of them complained quite a bit, but when I did a demonstration, they observed my pacing back and forth from the easel, observing far more than mark-making in the initial lay-in of forms. Noting the successful results of a 5 minute drawing, with all the proper marks in place, I informed them that I would not have been able to execute as quickly if I couldn't see all the forms at once. I could not play one against the other in the context of the whole. This refers not just to the model, and not just to the drawing, but to both at once. This kind of objective seeing is the foundation of sight-size.