Burst Reach #36

Hi hello hey it's been a while. I hope you're doing well. Or at least, I dunno, not just surviving but finding the time and energy to do things you enjoy as everything seems to be falling apart around us.

I finally found a job last month. Then I got let go after a single week. We're not going to talk about it. I've found another, part time retail job that I've accepted and I'm not sure how it will go, training starts today, but we're not going to talk about that either.

I finished the frenzy of four art markets in a row and they…were kinda all over the place. But I also don't want to talk about that!

Here's what I want to talk about: figure drawing.

Last month, a longtime friend and model who hadn't gotten to pose for my figure drawing group in at least a year finally had her schedule open up, and told my wife about how much she missed modeling for us. I was burned out, contemplating disbanding the group, not sure what to do, but hearing this got me excited, and instead of telling the group and plotting a standard meetup, we picked a small number of friends and invited them instead.

It was a great night. We were all rusty, struggling to get back into it, and well, the clothes the model wore for half the time weren't the best for the occasion either, haha. But it was still fantastic, and it reminded me that, oh yeah, I LOVE figure drawing, even when I suck at it. I had gotten so bogged down in the minutia of maintaining and managing our online group (amongst other things) that I just lost sight of that.

Not long after, Richard Graves and I went to see a 1920s style cabaret show put on by a slew of dance friends. Neither of us felt super social, we didn't stick around when it was over, we took our sketchbooks with figure drawing as our main purpose. Later at the ArtStruck Festival, I took a break and wandered over to watch dancers perform there, and sketched while I watched. After that, a living statue called the Granite Goddess was set up close by so I ran over, asked if it was alright to draw her, and quickly sketched her as well.

I felt recharged, and the gears were turning in my head, and some old ideas resurfaced that I'm now putting more energy into.

Next month, I will be hosting a figure drawing workshop at the Bristol Public Library with Embodied Art Dance. It'll be the first of hopefully multiple public figure drawing sessions in our area. I'm also working on a zine about how my figure drawing group was formed and how anyone can do the same.

Basically: I want figure drawing to become a more common practice in our region, and I want to share my love for it and encourage others to do it as well. I want to see more groups, classes, public sessions, etc. I've been leading my own group for NINE years now, and in all that time, I haven't seen anyone else try to do anything similar outside of the occasional class. It doesn't have to be that way, right?!

So yeah. That's my new focus as an artist I guess. I'm still working out what it means for my own group, but I'm taking a few steps back from it either way.

I don't know if this will work. We led shorter sessions after our two Embodied performances in 2023 and 2024, and hosted a figure drawing session at 2023’s Bristol in Bloom Art Festival. Not very many people joined, but those who did had a good time I think. I didn't really teach, or try to, but for this workshop I'll be more hands-on and try to help others. I'll hopefully have the zine ready and printed by then and will give it to anyone who's really interested at these workshops and sell it elsewhere.

It may all be a shot in the dark. A few friends may show up and that'll be it. It may feel like a waste of time and energy, the way so many things do lately.

I'm not sure. I think about the art shows I've had, and how only a small number of people show up for those, largely just friends. How few sales I make at so many markets. How small my social media audience is altogether and how few of them really interact when I share my work. It feels hopeless sometimes. But I have to keep trying because I frankly don't feel like I have much else. And, I don’t know, with horrible, generative AI images on the rise, getting people to at least try to make art with their own two hands in the company of other real humans feels like a good way to fight that shit.

Here, have a painting I did last week based on a picture I took of our model last month showing off her muscles:

That’s all I’ve got for now I guess.

Go see Sinners in theaters if you haven’t, and Thunderbolts* too if you like superhero stuff. The new Taskmaster series has kicked off and I’ve only watched the first episode so far but it’s a banger.

Take care of yourselves and those around you. See you soon.