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Another one of Anna: this time with arms raised, looking ahead, reclining. It is fun to look back on sketches, at what they convey and record. Here she looks young and lovely. She was relaxing on the grass at Fowey in Cornwall, the sun was shining and she was happy. Not all drawing/sketching has to be serious, but to capture moments like these you do have to be quick on the draw!

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Anna in Fowey sketched by Alan Dedman

You should draw from life, not photo’s. Use photo’s for reference by all means, but use your own brain, hands and eyes to work out what something looks like. I say this to all you London Art College students of mine and other students who are getting pleasing results from using photo’s.

A photo is an image cast onto a flat plane: images in the retina of our eyes are cast onto a concave surface and the resulting perspective is known as artistic or naturalistic perspective. Camera or mechanical perspective is what you get with photo’s. Whether post-modernism says anything goes or not, as a learner about art, you should practice the time honoured skills that make up art activity as we know it. That way you will become stronger.

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Anna laughing sketched by Alan Dedman

And now for something completely different. In a few moments relief from drawing nudes, I was cast up on the beach at Pevensey Bay – where the Normans truly landed, apparently. As usual, I made sketches between bathing and imbibing. I like the way figures are presented to the viewer in an informal, cut off way. Hidden by shelves of gravel and boat hulls. Of course you lie down on a beach, something you never do in the life room at the Royal Academy Schools (unless you are drunk, of course).

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Sketch made at Pevensey Bay by Alan Dedman

This is a page from one of my sketch books when I was a student at the Royal Academy Schools. We were tutored, whilst drawing from the nude, by various figurative artists of the day, some of whom were RA’s. Norman Blamey was one. Norman’s work was characterised by his use of the palette knife and masking tape, rather than brushes. He produced a highly polished, very still realism. If you look at his teaching sketch on the corner of the page, he clarifies the issues of form. And this is what any person learning about life drawing requires. Understanding perceptual phenomena.

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Sketch of a model by Alan Dedman with additions by Norman Blamey, RA.

It is hard for us to contemplate old age. I worked for Age Concern Westminster and was able to see for myself, how people cope with advancing years. I did this straight after being at St. Martin’s School of Art. Later, I sketched and drew all sorts of folk around me. Here is another example – he looks drawn into himself and lost. The inhabitants of the Bondway Hostel in Vauxhall were a strange lot, hearing their stories about how they ended up there made me question concepts about fate and personal direction

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Sketch of an old man in South London by Alan Dedman

Here is an old man, who posed for us at the Royal Academy Schools (clothed). He was in the architecture school where the light was even more crepuscular and Victorian. This sketch, unlike the preceding one, is about tonal mass. More for the painting info than character/literal. I like the way his eye appears twice, as if he or me were moving, even though an artwork like this is static. See: www.alan-dedman-artist.co.uk for further examples.

Man sketched at the RA schools by Alan dedman

If you devote time to drawing from life, your powers of observation and drawing skills become strong. This is a sketch of an old man sleeping. I have included it after the example of life drawing to show how sketches differ from studies or drawings. The line is free, alive and precise. It catches the salient points of the subject and celebrates his character. Even though he is asleep, the process is ‘live’ and that is the difference between it and working only from photo’s; the way live music differs from studio productions.

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Pencil sketch of an old man asleep by Alan Dedman

This is Sylvia, a drawing typical of everyday work I did as a student at the Royal Academy Schools, when Peter Greenham was keeper there. It was mandatory to draw from life, or the nude as it is known. She posed well and this drawing captures and analyses her strength and the weight of her form with gravity passing through. It is a drawing, not a sketch. A drawing goes on for some time – it takes several hours. Sketches are quick and informal. Protracted studies like this, everyday, make you very capable of forming a lively and penetrating study of any subject, particularly people. The ‘live’ nature of the process makes it considerably more valuable as an aspect of traditional Western Art practice than works which are entirely derived from secondary 2D (photographic) material. The skill of life drawing isn’t revered or cultured as it used to be and whilst it may seem anachronistic, it wasn’t a bad thing that the Royal Academy Schools upheld this tradition as it used to.

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Life drawing of Sylvia by Alan Dedman