Life painting the Nude

Lucian Freud's 1995 life size canvas of Sue Tilly, a Job Center Supervisor, has just sold in New York for a phenomenal record $33.6 million. The painting called 'Benefits Supervisor Sleeping' has been nicknamed rather cruelly 'Fat Sue'. This lunch time Sue an attractive 51 year old lady was interviewed live on ITV News and objected 'on air' to the female news reader calling her 'Fat Sue'. The fleshy light, shade and character on voluptuous curves are far more interesting than those on stick thin modelsAlthough I'm not a great great lover of Freud's work I do appreciate the technique and the style he uses in his paintings. Although I feel some of his paintings are cruelly real like his portrait of the Queen.

Freud's painting makes my humble pencil drawings done over the last two weeks at a 'Life Class' in the Stamford Arts Center look extremely insignificant. But then, this is my first time at attempting Life drawing. I was nervous at first, not because of a naked bodies, I've seen a few of those over the years! but I didn't think my drawing would be good enough.

After the first class I found I had thoroughly enjoyed it and I had produced two pencil drawings, The first one not good, but then I found my 'eye' and made another better attempt with the second pose. Our model was actually covered all over his back with tattoos.................I left them out. He was a really interesting character

The second week we had a female model. My position in the room for her first pose produced a strange drawing I didn't like but the second pose I managed a much better attempt.

Getting the dimensions of the body and limbs correct and getting the pose to be believable take me a fair bit of concentration. I have to think carefully about 'negative space' and that helps me to get limbs in the right position.