Una Sealy's life drawing workshop

'A garden on the Coast', by Una Sealy

On Saturday morning we welcomed figurative artist, Una Sealy to the studio. Sahoko was unexpectedly called else where and Una, her colleague kindly took the helm of tutor for the day. Una and Sahoko are fellow artists at the RHA in Dublin and it was our privilege to learn from Una her unique perspective on life drawing. Una's teaching and drawing is full of vigour, colour and energy and she directed students in finding scale, dimension, weight and much much more in their drawings. A busy and stimulating morning was kick started by a series of quick sketches to ease tension, shed the shackles of everyday demands and let the mind flow; followed by our model striking longer poses which our students interpreted though the medium of a rubber onto an already charcoaled, blackened sheet - a very useful exercise for an artist as you're working from dark to light instead of the more assumed light to dark.

Rudiments of scale

After my job of preparing and serving up vegetarian lunch was complete, I decided to join in the afternoon session of drawing - a bit rusty and inhibited would be an understatement in describing my life drawing skills at the moment, but very quickly the mental 'to do list' of everyday life faded and my minds eye focused on our model's pose. Well, that's it, I'm determined now to get back to some drawing, so much so that I rushed into Hopkins Toy Shop yesterday and bought a blank canvas for my next painting - it's going to involve a Georgian window, the view down onto the valley and our vintage Silver Cross pram; I'll let you have a peep when it's finished. We really enjoyed Una's visit and hope to see her again, maybe even for some landscape classes in the early summer months of next year.

 

'Carpet City', by Una Sealy