It's been a rough couple of weeks here in New York. I've been feeling pretty worn down and exhausted by politics. Which made last weekend a good time to take a couple of days to reconnect with life drawing, thanks to a two-day life drawing workshop run by Dalvero Academy. I'll start with a quote (brought to my attention by my dear friend Julia Sverchuck) from South African artist William Kentridge:

“I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing—the contingent way that images arrive in the work—lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are and how we operate in the world.”

As an artist whose art explored life under Apartheid in South Africa with moral rigor and sensitivity, I expect Kentridge's art will be a personal touchstone going forward. He's talking about drawing, sure, but he's explicitly talking about this process as a model for living. I'm trying to take his words to heart. I want to listen, I want to see, I want to understand before anything else. But then, action.

Patrick, our first model of the weekend.

And then Sameer, whose long legs and arms usually require me to add an L extension onto my drawings!

These drawings were made using both hands at once, a good trick to try if you ever want to make your brain explode.

I'll post my drawings from the second day later this week. Until then!