Howdy pardners, and welcome to ✨almost March✨
AKA: Almost Women’s History Month.
I’ve never been one to celebrate.
Mostly because I get confused by every waking minute being a holiday and I can’t keep up.
But for the sake of giving my post a theme!?!
IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE!
Ok, fine, but really—
I wanted to celebrate Women’s History Month in a Sketchbook Exposé post because half of my sketchbooks are of figure drawings these days.
And figure drawing has completely altered my perception of beauty.
It has taught me to desexualize the human form in a way that has been deeply healing and rewarding.
Drawings are very telling of how we see the world.
Which is incredibly vulnerable, so I understand why a lot of people are reluctant to draw or share their drawings.
When I first started drawing people (instead of animals)— something I told myself I had to learn to seem “normal”(???) I drew women with huge boobs and microscopic waists.
These drawings are really cringey for me to look at today, but that’s because they exposed my ideas of feminine beauty.
For reference here are two drawings from when I was in 9th grade and another from college:
It goes without saying that I was simply reflecting what the world told me was beautiful—
Gigantic tiddies and a waist like a stretched-out Gumby.
I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know that I and many of my friends at the time struggled with eating disorders.
Once I realized that I was sick because I was being fed a constant stream of toxic imagery, I tried to avoid media that upheld harmful beauty standards— but even then the imagery was inescapable.
The media we consume is like the food we eat— it makes us who we are.
It teaches us what to value and what not to value.
My first experience with figure drawing was when I was 29 years old.
A friend invited me to join her at a donation-based, recurring figure drawing session that occurs at UC Berkeley every Friday night and Saturday morning.
I was immediately in love.
I didn’t go to art school, so being around artsy-fucks in an artsy-as-fuck environment was SO EXCITING and empowering.
A popular tenet of life drawing is: “Draw what you see, not what you think you see.”
Many of us assume we see shapes and curves that aren’t really there.
For example, being told that “a woman’s body is hourglass shaped”— will lead you to drawing a model with a thinner waist than she actually has.
The more time I spent figure drawing, the more I fell in love with the subtle shapes and diversities of the human body.
You develop a reverence for the natural human form.
With time, figure drawing sessions have become my church.
I go to sessions to heal, to be free, and to be surrounded by a community of like-minded art nerds.
One of my favorite things about the human brain is it’s plasticity.
Our brains are highly adaptable.
Feed it new content/imagery and watch your perceptions of reality change.
If you have any interest in figure drawing I recommend researching your local colleges to see if they offer after-hours figure drawing sessions for the community.
They’re usually lower-cost than alternatives and often recur weekly throughout the school year.
Comments (Let’s Chat!):
Have you ever attempted life drawing?
Even drawing a vase or something.
Do you have a body-image journey that you’re working on?
Do you have methods for avoiding toxic imagery?
Listening to: