This pose, drawn at the Atelier School of Classical Realism in Oakland, took about 10 hours. I still have a few hours left (without the model) to “finish” the picture.

It’s very difficult to find a long-pose life drawing session that I’m able to attend the Bay Area. Most evening life drawing session poses max out at 20 minutes; a pose that lasts many hours, like the pose I drew here, seems to interest few evening artists. In our hyper-cyberspaced out world, even artists rush around like roadrunners on amphetamines.

And this style of drawing is unpopular these days. In my head I hear an art teacher I know saying, “your drawing is too fussy, too lifeless.” And on some levels I would have to agree with him. But during the course of this long pose I learned so much about color, form, proportion. It gives me a foundation for the next long pose, and hopefully that one will look  more free and less precious, because of the long pose, and not despite it.