Life drawing – johnminnion.com

Life Drawing

How I wished I had started life drawing earlier. It is terribly easy for an illustrator to hide behind a strong style and never greatly improve the underlying quality of drawing. Though my ability to caricature developed a lot, I see a stiffness in the figures in early drawings which only gradually loosened up after I got the life drawing habit in around 1994.

Nowadays, though retired from deadline work, I go to regular life drawing sessions. I am delighted that, after nonsensically going out of fashion in art colleges for some years, it has become a thriving activity available to all. Classes have sprung up everywhere, quite independent of mainstream education. Life drawing is now enthusiastically taken up by a new generation who appreciate its qualities as a mindful experience as well as its enhancement of drawing skills. Incidentally it also nourishes a more grown-up attitude to the human body.

I have done thousands of life drawings. Here’s a few of them: