Studio Incamminati hosted a nude drawing workshop at Hillsdale Jan. 6-10, providing a professional nude model and instruction from artist JaFang Lu for the 12 students registered.
“Having a professional, live model that we could work with was amazing,” sophomore Phoebe Kalthoff said.
The week began with an intensive study of human anatomy using a skeleton and basic figure drawing techniques, and quickly progressed to include ample studio time for the student artists.
“If you’re going to make art with a human subject, it’s incredibly important to have a working knowledge of anatomy,” sophomore Forester McClatchey said. “Professional sculptors and painters are basically as knowledgeable as surgeons about the human body. It’s an unnecessary veil to have clothed models.”
Students began their study of human anatomy by looking for specific marks on a skeleton. As the week progressed, the instructor placed small, red stickers on the live model to indicate which parts of the human body the artists needed to focus on to create realistic drawings.
Junior Maggy Smith said she learned proportions and linear construction by studying the human form.
“The human body is a simple, rhythmic form,” Smith said. “It is also extremely complex and hard to draw.”
Drawing the human form is a delicate endeavor. Smith said changing even one small aspect in a sketch inevitably affects the entire drawing.
“Being able to see and understand everything without it being distorted by clothing is very helpful,” she added.
Hillsdale students learned under the direction of Studio Incamminati’s JaFang Lu, a well-known contemporary realist artist who has taught drawing workshops for the past decade.
“Having that outside perspective was really important. Our art department is incredible, but after a while, you come to know all of the teachers’ approaches quite well,” Smith said. “No artist is the same.”
Lu often began the morning with a demonstration, then gave her students five minutes to warm up with gesture drawing, during which the students tried to capture the motion and form of a model’s brief pose.
“There’s a process of warming up to drawing that is one of the purposes to gesture drawing,” freshman Joel Calvert said. “As a former athlete, I think of it as warming up for a race. It was pretty relaxed but rigorous at the same time—intense in a fun way. Take five minutes, then slowly build up the time into more finished drawings.”
By the end of the week, students were drawing based off a model holding her pose 40 minutes at a time. They often worked in the studio for eight hours each day.
“It is actually physically taxing,” Calvert said. “People were tired at the end of the day. The long hours were really helpful or my learning because drawing takes time and it’s something that you need to take a lot of time at to become good. It’s not something that you can pick up and put down for 10 minutes every day.”
Students were also challenged by Lu’s linear approach to figure drawing and emphasis on technical skills.
“At Hillsdale we have an additive style. We start with a skeleton and build from that,” Smith said. “JaFang Lu taught us to carve on paper, create shapes and add detail as time goes by.”
Participants of the workshop emphasized the importance of practicing technical skills, learning from a new instructor, and drawing based off the form of a nude model.
“You’re looking at the angles and the form,” Kalthoff said. “The human body is one of the most beautiful things, made in the image of God, and we, as artists, try to recreate what we see.”
