Mike Ananian teaches painting as well as drawing at UNC-Greensboro. I have posed for a number of his painting classes since 1996. These photos are from painting classes in McIver, before the studio art classes were moved to the new Maud Gatewood Building on the other side of Spring Garden St. Mike, like many other painting/drawing teachers, likes the use of props, so that the model is put in some kind of context.
He has had me pose with an old trombone, and I have posed with my own props - sticks, swords (of which I have 3) and a Commanche courting flute I made from a kit. Most of the paintings in this post are from a pose with a ukelele, one of many props accumulated for painting and drawing classes. Note that Belinda, in her painting, included all the props around me, including my green robe which I draped over one of the chairs; you can easily see by comparing the photo of me posing with her painting.
A great anatomy exercise in drawing (could be painting, too) is the opportunity to draw a live model posing with a skeleton. Both Mike Ananian and Mark Gottsegen have had me pose that way, and I always find it an amusing experience. The skeletons at UNC-G seem all to be about my height, so it really is a good exercise for drawing students in comparing what they can see with what they usually can only imagine below the skin of the model.
From the first of these poses I have done at UNC-Greensboro, I have thought of them all as "skin and bones" exercises, both for the model and the students. The photo of the reclining pose is fuzzy because the teacher who snapped it could not get used to that odd quirk of digital flash cameras in having a first "mini-flash" to eliminate red-eye, then the real flash; he would always jerk the camera after the first flash, affecting the focus of the final shot.
I have always had a special place in my heart for artists and art students who are brave enough to do nude self portraits which are then shared with the public (in the case of artists) or with their classmates (in the case of students).
At Beaver College (now Arcadia University, north of Philadelphia) nude self portraits - life sized, yet - were required of students in one life drawing class. I am sorry to say I did not get photos of any of those, but I was impressed, and wrote a poem for them which follows below.
NAKED SELF II
Each has seen his nakedness of spirit;
Each has shown her unencumbered form.
I salute the artist playing model,
Abandoning the segregating norm.
So celebrate creation's living wonder,
And know that you are marvelously made!
Be innocent and childlike in your gazing,
In seeing and in showing unafraid.
From time to time, students in classes I have posed for have shared nude self portraits with their classes, going a step further than the "self portrait" assigned by the teacher. I am posting some samples here.
It was for a Mark Gottsegen assignment that a talented African-American student did "self portrait 3"; the assignment was to show the planes of the face (that was all that was required) in a self portrait, and she chose to go a step further.
And a special tribute to two art teachers: first, Michael Ananian, art professor at UNC-Greensboro, who has featured himself, nude, in more than one series of paintings. For samples of Michael's work, go here: http://www.michaelananian.com/. Also, kudos to Renee Foulks, art teacher in Philadelphia, who has done a number of nude self portraits, one of which I found online and have posted above.
Her name was Janet McShain. After raising eight children, she decided on the pursuit of art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Though I believe her major was painting, as you can see she was quite a sculptor as well. "Tom the Prophet," in the photo above, was done, I believe, from a session for which I was standing in a somewhat twisted position in a summer session at PAFA's auxiliary building at 1301 Cherry St. Janet was the only one in that class, as I recall, who focused on just my head.
Janet's title for the above sculpture was "Irish King," because that is how she said she saw me in this pose. It was just a stick I was holding; she added the spear point herself. Both "Irish King" and "Seated Satyr," were done in the Fall of 1995 and the Spring of 1996, both in two-week sessions, with me posing five days a week for two weeks for each pose.
The Academy has an odd structure, I suppose to save money. Long poses like these involve some days that are "instructed," i.e. with the teacher (or teachers) present, while other days are "uninstructed," with only the class, the model, and a student monitor to mark the pose and keep the time present. It never ceased to amaze me how many students simply didn't show up on the uninstructed days, especially considering how high tuition is at PAFA. Janet, however, was always there, as was Mauricio, whose head of me was done partly from the Satyr pose and partly from a few extra sessions I posed for just him.
The last photo at the bottom shows Delores Lombardi's interpretation of the pose Janet used for "Tom the Prophet." (You can see some more of Delores's work in the post on Fleisher Art Memorial.)
The young man in the photo above is Mauricio Alvarez, a second-year student at PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) at the time he sculpted my head. In that same year, he won a coveted prize in a sculpture competition which used another male model. The model held an incredibly difficult pose for the 3-hour sessions over a two-week period. All of the sculptures were good, in my opinion, but Mauricio, the youngest in the class, came out the winner. I posed additional sessions for Mauricio, since he chose to do my head from the pose in the photo below, and the recorder I was holding was in the way for the "head-on" view he wanted. The student shown in this pose is Janet McShane, subject of another post.
The deal about the extra posing for Mauricio was supposed to be that I would get a copy of the head in exchange for my extra time posing for him. Unfortunately, it was Mauricio's first experience attempting a rubber mold, and it did not harden properly, forcing him to do the easier plaster mold, which allows one copy only. In place of the head, Mauricio gave me a mini-headstone in marble, a reclining nude with the carved word "Son," as if for a youth's headstone. It sits now in an honored place in my front flower garden.
It was when searching out Janet McShain's last name for another post that I ran into a dear old friend - Manayunk Art Center. I posed there for many a Friday night for an open drawing session during my time in Philadelphia - and, if I'm not mistaken, I actually started working there when I was still in Delaware. That was one congenial group of people! Usually they would retire to the Adobe Cafe nearby after the session (which ran from 7-10pm) for snacks, beer and margaritas. My favorite there was ranch wings with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which I think is the perfect accompaniment to wings done with a sweet hot sauce. (I like Buffalo Wings, too, don't get me wrong, but I also like sweet wings, as long as they are hot - preferably with habanero peppers.)
EXCERPT FROM "THE TAO OF FIGURE DRAWING" BY TOM BYRD
Like most of the art teachers I have worked for, Jim Rosen believes in warm-ups. Our usual procedure is for me to do four different poses over a twenty-minute period. I hold each pose for one minute, then rotate the same pose in five different directions, then move on to the next pose.
For the warm-ups, and for much of what follows, Rosen has each student use a rectangular aperture made of two L-shaped pieces of cardboard. Elementary geometry comes into play as each student adjusts the size of her/her aperture to match the proportions of the newprint. A diagonal is drawn on the paper, and the two L-shaped pieces are put together so that the diagonal on the paper is the same as the diagonal of the aperture, making paper and aperture proportional to each other. Each student chooses the most convenient size of his/her aperture for viewing the model. Some make them small, and hold them close to their eyes, while others make them larger and hold them farther away. Rosen uses this device to push the students into ending up with (usually) only three "shapes" on the finished drawing - the figure in the middle and the two spaces to either side, with no space at top and bottom.
I remove the towel I have been wearing, and for my first five-times-one pose I pick one I have used several times before - a standing archer, legs spread front to back, arms in the position of holding bow and arrow at full draw. Rosen looks at the pose and cracks "An archer - and since he is a good model, note there is no quiver." A few gentle groans greet the pun. Rosen is after just the line - the bare outline (pardon my pun) - in these drawings. He stresses they should strive for "a single quality of line." Most students do the five drawings on a single sheet of paper, sometimes partially erasing each drawing before moving quickly to the next, sometimes leaving all lines intact.
