jenn schiffer's live laugh blog

figure drawing session - april 2, 2025

i went to my first live model figure drawing session in over 5 years last night! the host, jc print room, was great and so was everyone else there. it felt like my first day at school, except i wore grubby sweats because i make a huge mess no matter what media i'm working with. overall, a+ vibes and will come back. the following are my pages from the 3-hour session.

when i talked about trying to learn to enjoy markers, i was serious. while it would be uncouth to bring the magic scent markers, i did bring some regular alcohol markers with the intention to make them my primary medium of the night.

the way figure drawing sessions usually go is that the model goes from several short poses and increasing as the night goes on. tonight we did 5 2-minute poses, 6 5-minute poses, 2 10-minute poses, 2 20-minute poses, and wrapped up with a 15-minute pose.

i find quick poses to be more fun but i think that's more because there's less pressure to be detailed and "perfect". i do need to get outside my 1-5 minute pose comfort zone, and that's why i - unlike a lot of the folks at the beginning - stayed until the every end of the session.

that's really just to say that if you like really long poses, you're likely to get you choice of angle - chairs are often in a circle or semi-circle around the model on stage.

when a model comes back from a break with a prop, i want to give them a standing ovation. once in berlin, i looked up figure drawing sessions and joined one that was "technology" themed which just mean the model used different props that plugged into a way - if i recall correctly, one of the props was an iron.

i stopped typing this to look at my first figure drawing sketchbook. my first session was january 2015 - 10 years ago! i've only done figure drawing sessions in jersey city, nyc, and berlin. i think i'd like to add more cities to that list. i was going to say "i wouldn't say my drawing has improved" but it absolutely has and i need to give myself credit: i've learned to be more versatile with my tools, i've studied anatomy, and i think i'm finally coming into what my "style" is.

there's a lot of room for improvement on the hard parts: hands, feet, face. there's a reason why ai is so bad at generating hands: they look so different at event slightly different angles. anyway, that's why you see me making hands around the longer pos drawings; when i get bored i shift to studies of those more difficult body parts.

for the month of april, i'm trying to draw every single day to build the practice into my muscle memory. i look forward to attending more of these live figure sessions regularly and sharing them with you.

xoxo jenn