The Sixth Annual Drawing Jam

Papo and I spent almost nine hours at the Drawing Jam, an annual event held by the Seattle Academy of Fine Art. The Jam featured 12 hours of live music, belly dancers, free food and art supplies, and about ten studios open for anything from still-life drawing to clay-modeling to nude figure models. I was picking on Papo because even he called it "artsy-fartsy," he spent several years as an art student in San Francisco. If he calls something artsy-fartsy then it REALLY must be. At Seven o'clock they ushered out the kiddos and we broke out the beer that the Red Hook Brewery had so kindly donated for the event......didn't I just have a post about drinking and drawing recently? I spent most of my night in the long-pose room where the models hold their pose for an hour. I met so many great people and it was cool to have so many REAL artists in one room. They really gave me some great pointers, I think I'm going to start sudying how to draw hair. It is a really elusive technique for me, I always end up with "rambo" hair like the woman in the drawing on the right has. I wish they had an event like this every week, I really need the practice. That was my first time ever drawing the human figure. I was really surprised to discover that there are a lot of parts that I generally overlook when I see a naked person. I must have spent twenty minutes studying one woman's shoulder! It was very eye-opening for me. I realized that people, including myself, generally have a very poor idea of what is beautiful in other human beings. Studying the body as I did that night teaches one to see beauty in everybody.