< Back To Marathons
Drawing Marathon – IN-PERSON: Portraiture and Presence with Linda Darling & Guests
Course Description
In this intensive two-week Marathon, we will engage in the practice of drawing for eight hours per day, a rare opportunity. The focus will be on portraiture, closely observing the unique features and character of the model. We will play close attention to spatial qualities both within the forms, and in relationship to the geometry presented by the paper. We will examine the features and the character of the head and body not as separate parts, but as volumes related to one another. We will look at the language of portraiture from historical to contemporary art, to investigate how the space around the form is a form unto itself and creates its own drama.
The first three days we will focus on the head. We will then move to 3/4 seated and full body expressive poses. Students will be encouraged to experiment with iteration and reordering one or multiple drawings into other compositions. The purpose of this class is to expand and broaden the students’ awareness of the primary nature of drawing and the human body. Through the process of looking at relationships as presented in the immediate moment of the studio, participants will draw the forms of the body and its relationships with the light and architecture of the studio from direct observation. The goal of this process is not accuracy, but to draw relationships that are evocative, and built over time, with revision, experimentation, and restatements.
The emphasis will be placed on characterizing the shapes of relationships in all regards. Compositions will be found and not predetermined. Because discernments are necessary, any space or shape will be relative to the terms of drawing: mark, line, volume, light, value, and not concrete separate identities that are used to describe parts of the body or space.
In addition to short group critiques throughout the Marathon, all instruction is done on an individual basis with small lectures to present reproductions of drawings that present an example that is relevant to the drawings in process or materials in use in the students’ work.
