BELFAST, Maine (WABI) – From prehistoric Venus figurines to Michelangelo’s David, artists have tried to capture the natural beauty of the human form for thousands of years.
In Belfast, a weekly class is giving this opportunity to any adult, regardless of experience level or preferred medium of creative expression.
Hosted every Tuesday from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at community arts center Waterfall Arts is the adults’ short-form figure drawing class.
While it is typically monitored by Tim Conte, the class is led this summer by local artist Donald Patten.
The class is open to anyone 18 years of age or older and features a nude model.
After starting his creative career in ceramics, Patten says he fell in love with the art of figure drawing after attending the classes at Waterfall Arts in 2022.
Now, not only is Patten one of the center’s Figure Drawing Coordinators, but he also hosts other opportunities for artists to experience a live figure drawing session.
“Professional artists, newcomers and students, so we see a lot of variety in the art that’s made, especially with a different variety of media,” says Patten on the class’s attendance.
On Tuesdays, the model is only posed for a timed duration, ranging from two to twenty minutes as the class progresses.
“I love to see the different shapes and discover things and you can do that in short poses,” explains class attendee and longtime local artist David Estey. “Because the model can do a more dynamic, interesting thing she can hold for the short pose, but that’s difficult in the longer pose, so they tend to be more static.”
While the different poses keep things interesting, having the model in the room makes a huge difference in how students’ works turn out.
“With the photograph, you only just have the image and there’s no variant in that,” Patten describes. “With a figure drawing, where you are in the room really shapes the drawings you make.”
From Philadelphia, Terry Halbert has been coming to figure drawing class for the past three summers while on vacation in Belfast.
“I’m not an artist, I was never in art school,” comments Halbert on her skillset.
Despite her lack of experience, she says she has always been made to feel welcome: “There is really, literally no outside judgment. You just sit down with your tools and you do what you can.”
For her, the figure drawing class is a lesson in looking with care and intention: “It’s about sort of training yourself to really see what’s in front of you and then try to replicate it.”
As Estey explains, nudity is an amazing subject to sharpen artistic skills: “Drawing from the figure has historically been important because the figure has virtually everything. Softness, hardness, angles, curves, all kinds of contortions when the body moves. So, it’s always been a primary focus of artists and where they learn to draw and design and think about space and form and light.”
Arianna Forbes has been modeling for figure drawing sessions since college and has spent about three years modeling for Waterfall Arts.
For her, the confidence to model nude comes from the comfortable atmosphere and the long line of women who have come before her, who were only historically allowed in artistic spaces as nude models.
“One of my favorite parts about figure modeling is seeing that one specific pose shown in different perspectives and different talents,” Forbes comments on her experience.
“It is a different experience to walk into a space where one person is naked and everyone else is looking very hard at them and trying to draw them,” describes Halbert. “I think to be prudish about it, to be upset by it or shocked by it is to really be losing something important about being alive. So, you know, when I come in here and I see everyone is being normal in this situation, it sort of reinforces this sense of being connected to a richer human experience.”
Alongside Tuesday’s short-form classes, Waterfall Arts offers long-form figure drawing classes every Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon.
For Saturday classes, instead of multiple poses in different durations, the model holds one pose the whole session.
Both classes cost $15 for drop-ins and $10 per student.
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