Challenge #2: Life Drawing Live - from the Royal Academy

I'm quite liking the idea of a monthly challenge during 2019. So, after snowy paintings, my Challenge for February (I'm thinking once a month is about right) is to watch the live streaming by the Royal Academy of a Live Life Drawing Class - and draw along with the class!

a still from last year's class

See #LifeDrawingLive: the anatomy class - A live-streamed class to join from home.
This takes place:
ON: Thursday 28 February 2019
AT: 7.30 — 9pm

You've got the rest of the month to practice - and there are some ideas below

• the very short introductory video (below) from the Life Drawing Class they ran in January 2018 gives you an idea of what it's likely to be like
• The class instructor will be Sarah Simblet. She's very good and her books are also highly rated and best sellers!
  
  • This is a link to her book The Drawing Book: An innovative, practical approach to drawing the world around you
  • This is Sarah's book - Anatomy for the Artist
• I've also got a A Making A Mark Guide: Life Drawing and Life Class to my Making A Mark website. You can now read it on the website without downloading it.

My sketch from A 'Day to Draw' at the National Gallery
done while listening to Sarah Simblet talk about
the anatomy and skeletal features and muscle groups
in Polliaiuolo Brothers ' The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastien'

This was my sketch done while listening to Sarah Simblet explain anatomical features in various paintings in the National Gallery in 2007!

Life Class on Channel 4 in 2009

Jonathan Yeo was obviously totally unaware that live streaming has been done before!

The live streaming of a life class has happened once before on Channel 4 when we had Life Class in 2009 and LOTS of people joined in.  Below is what happened.....

My life drawing from the truly awful Gary Hume class on Wednesday.

This is how I summarised it at the time

On Monday I started following Life Class on Channel 4 - - and a number of other people. These are the daily posts I did last week. The series was generally 'voted' a success by all those who participated in it.

• Monday - Review: 'Life Class - Today's Nude' on Channel 4 with Maggi Hambling

• Tuesday - Life Class - with Humphrey Ocean - drawing in the Life Room at the Royal Academy Schools

• Wednesday - It's getting embarrassing in the Life Class! - a lesson in how NOT to take a life class- with Royal Academician Gary Hume (in his London studio)

• Thursday - Back on track with the Life Class - if you're going to choose one to view I highly recommend this episode by the only artist - Judy Purbeck - who was a very experienced tutor in life drawing (in Hornsey Library)

• Friday - The Final Channel 4 Life Class in Series 1 - with John Berger (in a dance studio in Paris)

Plus you can see the drawings done by other people and posted in the Flickr Group Pooland read various comments

• Here's another comment about it by The Independent - The sketch show: Can television teach you to draw like an expert?

• The BBC couldn't resist finding an untypical life model for an item about what life is like as a life model in Stock Still and stark naked

• The Daily Telegraph - Channel 4 hit with complaints over nude life drawing programme

Section 1.18 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code says: "Nudity before the watershed must be justified by the context."

You can also see some of the drawings that were produced in Life Class: Today's Nude on Flickr.

At the end of the week I wrote another blog post about Another way of drawing people - which is another way you can limber up for live streaming at the end of the month!  Believe me drawing people live who have clothes on and don't realise they are your life model makes life drawing in a class easy peasy!

Life drawing at the Royal Academy

Ten years ago - in November 2008 - I had the opportunity to join a Life Drawing Class at the Royal Academy. Life drawing in the Royal Academy Schools Life Room is my blog post about that class and describes what the Life Drawing Room is like.