Peter Cox Drawing Workshop

Peter Cox taught drawing and anatomy at the Art Students League of New York in the mid to late 90s.  I was privileged to study with him for about 4 years.  I left drawing for printmaking in 1996, though continued drawing.  For a number or reasons I stopped drawing regularly in late 1999 and didn't start again for 12 years.

In the fall of 2012 Peter invited a number of us to attend a Saturday morning "Drawing and Anatomy Workshop" in his studio.  Between 5 and 8 of us show up every Saturday.  Classes consist of warm-up gesture sketches and longer poses.  Here and there we get an "exercise", which are always a challenge, often mind-bending, and great fun.

We were discussing this morning that drawing is in such stark contrast to the modes of communication the twitters, facebooks, texting, and the ubiquitous mobile phones.  Drawing cannot be instant -- it requires the balance of active and contemplative, intense focus and concentration which have to be converted to the physical act of tracing a pencil, charcoal, or pen across a piece of paper.  When drawings work, the experience is as exciting as anything imaginable.  When they don't you feel as though you've come face to face with your sheer inadequacy.  

Some drawings included here from these sessions.

 

Exercise:  Same pose, 5 minutes front, 5 minutes back.  18 x 24 Ebony graphite

Exercise:  Same pose, 10 minutes each.  18 x 24. 15 June 2013

Left: opposite hand (right hand) pencil point only, right: normal hand (left hand) flat side of a fat charcoal only

Exercise:  Same pose, 10 minutes each.  18 x 24. 22 June 2013
Left: drapery only, no figure; right: exposed figure only, no drapery

Exercise: 20 minutes, no figure allowed. 18 x 24. 29 June 2013
The background and foreground was set with complicated shapes.  We were to draw everything except the figure, loads of fun.  One of the goals of this exercise was to help us develop a sense of the figure in space.  Most of the time we focus (ideally) on the structure of the figure as built from the inside out.  Michelangelo wrote that the figure in the space where it resides is defined by the forces of its environment pressing against the force from within.

Drawing: 20 minutes, 18 x 24, charcoal. 13 April 2013.

Drawing: 15 minutes, 18 x 24, graphite. 27 April 2013.

Drawing (and an exercise): 20 minutes, 18 x 24 charcoal. 18 may 2013.
The exercise was to use vine charcoal to sketch in the gesture then the flat side of # 9 charcoal to render the volumes of the figure.

Drawing: 30 minutes, 18 x 24 charcoal.  29 June 2013