Bagels, Mexican Cheese and My Slowly Mounting Internal Rage

I have subsisted largely on bagels, mexican cheese and my slowly mounting internal rage for the last painful week. Deadlines are approaching and I am, in no nice terms, shitting myself (not literally of course, though if you give it time I’m sure all that spicy cheese’ll catch up with me).

Monday went relatively well, besides the fact I didn’t quite prepare for the sun and the heat and I spent most of the day fanning myself with my own skirt lest I start sweating all over my work. I printed up my earlier fairy etching onto the flower-embeded paper from Moulin Richard de Bas, Ambert, and ground another lithography stone in preparation for my final print this semester.

Tuesday was worse, I ended up all but completely undressing myself and standing on the podium with the life model to get away from the heat. Though I was pleased with my drawings, having been so consumed with doing monoprints I forgot how lovely and subtle a good pencil drawing could be, especially when do something I really enjoyed doing when I was much younger – a sort of effect I used to call ‘colour mapping’ in which you draw lines of different values around the shapes of the colours on figure depending on their tone. I also managed to book an Exhibition space at Denby’s Wine Estate for over Christmas, so I’ll probably have more on that closer to the time.

Wednesday, I finished drawing up my stone of a scene from the tale of Silent Poole, local to the area I grew up in, and first-etched it. In all realities it could’ve been a better image, but I was playing around with the idea of doing a partial bleed print and having the image escape from the frame as well.

Thursday… I honestly have no idea what I actually did on Thursday. There’s a list here that says I should’ve done some sketches and compositional studies for my illustration but any memory of that escapes me.

Friday was a day I’d rather forget. Having worked my arse off to get the images for the 3rd Illustration project done I was told that I have to either redo them or, and I quote, “salvage the wreck”. So naturally, my answer was “no” and then I went out for a drink.

I Have Returned From the Deep

So, I’m back from France after one and a half weeks of bliss: eating good food, learning interesting things and having a really pleasant, relaxing time not ripping my hair out over work – despite the hectic four days afterwards where I had very limited time and energy to pack all my things and drive 300 miles back to University. But I did manage to get some very good inspiration from my trip and some wonderful photographs that I hope will one day turn into prints. Especially those of the Penance Procession through Le-Puy-en-Valey (the town is a sight to behold by itself) at dusk just because the atmosphere was so awe-inspiring and surreal. I really wish I’d got some kind of recording of it because the feeling of being there, in crowd of so many people marching together through windy streets that echo the sound of choral singing and the chanting of those that march, while the sky turns to black and lamps of the procession seem to glow brighter with every stop, was simply amazing. As someone who isn’t particularly religious, beside the casual ingrained Catholicism, it opened my eyes to how so many people can believe so virilently in a higher being besides themselves because, in that atmosphere, I believed a little too.

Though, just as an area, the whole of the Haute-Loire (and much of the rest of France besides) is an extra-ordinary place to be. Wherever you turn, you can see history and culture – be it local or religious. From the story of La Bête du Gévaudan in Saugues to the chateaux that litter the contry side to cathedrals, churches and chapels in nearly every town, big or small.

I even managed to get some work done while I was gone, largely just sketches, but did pretty much finish my three final pieces for my illustration work – besides a few deails and little bit of work that needs to be added to them. For course, they’re no masterpieces. But they’re not as awful as they could be.

Why Manditory Life-Drawing For Young Adults and Teens Would Probably Do Us All a Lot of Good

I’m not in the country at the moment and, having no internet access for the next week, I thought I might make this weekly post pre-prepared about something that I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Initially, it might seem kind of scary and a little bit pervy. I mean, who wants their underage child shut in a room drawing a nude figure? Who wants their child to see a nude figure full stop? Who wants their child to be exposed to something so raw and potentially sexual at all? And that’s the thing, it’s not sexual, or pervy, or weird. It’s only becomes anything of that nature if you believe it is.

At first, it only really sprung to mind briefly. I was sitting in my Tuesday class, drawing the model – who also happened to be a woman I talk to a lot while I’m doing my print work – and, while she is really a stunning woman with a truly amazing figure, I observed that she actually had a really hairy arse. I know it’s only something trivial and slightly stupid to point out about someone (and by all means I’m not criticising her for it), but it really got me thinking about, primarily, myself – as someone who has a condition that makes me as hairy as a small primate –  but also all the other models I’d encountered.

As someone who grew up being looked down upon by my peers for my weight, my height and my general self-presentation (or lack thereof), which of course resulted in a lot of horrible insecurities that lingered long after it stopped happening, I noticed that since I’d started doing Life-Drawing regularly, I’ve been a lot more happy in myself and my body – I’ve seen different bodies of all types, shapes and sizes and I’ve come to realise nothing about me or anyone else is disgusting or abnormal. I haven’t felt the need to diet or go to the gym, because I haven’t felt the need to worry about my body because, frankly, it’s just a body. And even then, because I am actually happy in myself, I haven’t put tonnes of weight on, I’ve lost it (and even if I had, it honestly wouldn’t matter).

But the occasion that really made me consider the idea that things might change if everyone did Life-Drawing happened 2 weeks ago. I went out for a meal and a drink with my old friends from 6th Form and for the fact that I’d drunk too much to drive, I slept on my friend’s sofa – who still lives with her parents. At some point in the night I was woken up by the sound of someone moving about in the kitchen next door, grunting a little as they did so. Knowing that my friend’s boyfriend had been feeling ill earlier in the night, I thought it’d be an idea to go check on him and make sure he wasn’t dying. It wasn’t her boyfriend – as I realised when I met him in the doorway. It was her father. Stark-bollocks naked and looking rather surprised. At first, I didn’t understand. It was just my friend’s dad. It barely even registered that he was naked at all until he covered his groin and said “Do you mind?” and even then I was less than bothered. Naked people, I see them all the time. Nothing new.

It wasn’t until a week later, when my friend commented on what happened – having found out from her mother – that I realised it was generally something peculiar and something most people are embarrassed by. This was largely because he father had thought it creepy that I hadn’t reacted at all, that I hadn’t covered my face in shock or disgust, that I had looked at him as if he had been wearing clothes. He’d instantly assumed that it was something sexual and lewd and that I must have fancied him. I don’t, I’ve got access to my fair share of romantic interests – all of whom aren’t middle-aged with 4 children.

But the thing is, this sort of thing has happened before. And not just to me, but a lot of my friends who do art – and specifically life drawing. I’ve listened to accounts of friends being flashed by old men in the park and severely disappointing them when they don’t react at all; of walking straight past a naked person in the locker rooms, completely unawares while their friends whisper rude things beside them; of people encountering their parents completely nude, wandering the house and not even taking any kind of notice.

And you may think: Well, so what? These people don’t mentally register naked people as something to be ashamed of, that’s no reason to force young people to draw people in the nude. But that’s exactly the point. When you do life drawing, naked people don’t register. If you have to see something every day in a situation that is completely void of sexual nature, it stops being sexual and just become something that’s just like everything else. If this element of sexuality in the nude figure was removed, there’d likely be a lot less sexism – at least in terms of cat-calling and the constant sexualisation of women in the media. You wouldn’t have people looking at someone on the street and going “hmmm, I wonder what they look like naked?” because nudity mentally registers on the same field as a clothed person, so it’s of no sexual interest unless some kind of sexual act renders it so. You wouldn’t be able to blackmail people with nude photos because, who’d care? It’s just a naked person. And with Life Drawing, comes respect. You respect your models. You don’t touch them at all. If you want something moved, you ask, politely, and they move. They in turn respect you for respecting them when they put themselves in what would be considered quite a vulnerable position. You talk to them, you become friends with them. They stop just being a naked body, and become a person. This sort of connection doesn’t develop like that in any other kind of situation where nudity is involved and I think it needs to. I think people have a lot to learn about other people and even if it’s only one generation at first, the youngest generation, in 10, 20, 30 years, it’ll be normal not to think of nudity as synonymous with sexuality. No-one would care about the nip-slips, the breast-feeders and the budgy smugglers, because they honestly don’t matter. People would be able to wear what they want without fear that it might “distract” or drive silly young men wild with lust.I want to live in a world where the body you live in isn’t something to be ashamed and embarrassed of.