DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

Haruspex, 2013, by Fred Hatt

Every body is unique. There is a strain of figure drawing study that aims to modulate every model toward a Platonic ideal anatomy. There are valid reasons for such an approach, and it’s a necessary phase in learning anatomy to comprehend the universal underlying structural patterns of the body and the norms around which the variations vary. Most artists pursuing the practice of life drawing, though, notice that the diversity of individual bodies and faces is a far more compelling focus for ongoing study than abstract archetypes of male and female anatomy.

Wistful, 2013, by Fred Hatt 

Something I love about the culture of life drawing studios as I have encountered them is the appreciation they show for models of all ages, colors, shapes, sizes and types. Contrast the majority of most “fine art nude photography” you’ll find on the web or in print, where both male and female models conform to a narrow range of age and body type, or even worse, the commercial glamour industry’s images of models and celebrities Photoshopped into an utterly unnatural simulacrum of perfection. (Check this link for a revealing example of the latter.)

Nobility, 2013, by Fred Hatt

There are types of figurative visual art that are centered around abstract musical or mathematical qualities like harmony and repetition, and idealized figures are part of the vocabulary of such art. There is narrative art, often religious or civic political art, that deals in archetypal figures such as saints and heroes, abstracted characters that represent values and virtues – it wouldn’t do for such figures to have flawed, complicated individual bodies.

Spent, 2013, by Fred Hatt

I have no interest in creating perfect harmonies, and yet I think my work has musical qualities. I have no interest in distilling ideals into bodily form, and yet I think some of my drawings convey a strong sense of character.

Vendetta, 2013, by Fred Hatt

This exercise of sustained looking at naked strangers who are paid to hold still while we study them is more an art of responsiveness than of composition. Our drawings are portraits, but often we don’t know much about the models as people in the world. Our drawings are anatomy studies, but no surgeon could use them to plot her cuts.

Odist, 2013, by Fred Hatt

How much can you get, just by looking? Every model has differences in bone structure, muscularity, skin, energy, and expresssion. It is the individual qualities that fascinate.

Memorious, 2013, by Fred Hatt

A clothed model portrays a social role and a historical and cultural milieu. A nude model expresses more essential, timeless qualities of a human: physical/animal nature, spiritual life force, and the utterly particular combination of qualities that gives each one a singular identity.

Grounding, 2013, by Fred Hatt

I find it amazing and wonderful that out of hundreds or thousands or millions of people we see, we rarely mistake one for another, particularly among those familiar to us. If we know them well, even identical twins can be told apart. This shows the power of Nature’s principle of variation, and also the importance the human mind gives to observing individual difference.

Columnar, 2013, by Fred Hatt

I want the viewer of my drawings to confront the living reality of my models. It is not necessary to know the back stories, why this or that model has a certain facial expression or a certain scar. I want the viewer to feel what it felt like for me to encounter this person in the studio.

Unbridled, 2013, by Fred Hatt

A photograph of a person is evidence that that person exists. A drawing of a person is an artifact of an individual encounter with that person, scratched out on paper through the struggle and experience of the artist.

Discursion, 2013, by Fred Hatt

I try to follow the forms of the body as one part flows into another, to keep my marks responsive to the energy that the model manifests while holding the pose. In stillness there is great movement!

Sitting, 2013, by Fred Hatt

The model is paid to pose for the artists in a class. He gives us his image to study and to use as the subject of our art. This image should not be confused with the identity of the model himself, which contains complexities the artist will never know. The titles I have given to the drawings in this post should not be seen as descriptions of the models, but only of some qualities I have found in the drawings.

Empath, 2013, by Fred Hatt

Thanks to the professional artists’ models who posed for the drawings in this post, Donna, Eryn, Esteban, Fly, James, Kuan, Leticia, Marisol, Marlo, Pedro, Rebecca, Regina, Terry, and Vadim. All drawings were made in the second half of 2013, most at the Monday morning long pose session at Spring Studio in New York, of which I am the moderator (supervisor). All are drawn with aquarelle crayon on paper, approximately 19 3/4″ x 25 1/2″ (50 x 65 cm).

Wherefore, 2013, by Fred Hatt

(By the way, the term “naked singularity“, which I have used as the title of this post, comes from the field of astrophysics, where it is used to describe a theoretical point in space where gravity becomes infinite, yet without the light-swallowing “event horizon” of a black hole. Even physicists can’t say for sure whether it’s a real thing or not.)