In the blink of an eye

If you’ve never attended a life-drawing studio you may be curious about how the three hours goes by. The model starts by doing 30-second poses so that people can warm up their drawing skills, then one-minute poses and from there three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes and eventually a couple of long ones near the end of the session that are 15 or 20 minutes long. In the UQAM studio there’s always some great music playing — last time it was Fela Kuti and yesterday it was new-age psychedelic. Everyone in the room is completely focused on their own work, in trying to capture the essence of the pose or the particularity of a gesture. When you are that focused three hours goes by in the blink of an eye.

I wish I could spend every day drawing from the model.