On a bleak Thursday in late March, I head to Woodstock School of Art (WSA) for a figure-drawing session. Once I arrive at Studio 1, I look for an easel with a good angle of the model, set out my charcoal pencils and sketchpad, and take a moment to center myself. I’ve taken plenty of art classes without knowing what to expect, and they’ve all worked out fine. But this one feels different. I’m not sure why, but I feel a bit restless.
I returned to making art seven years ago for the first time since high school, and figure drawing has loomed large ever since. I’ve come to see it as the holy grail of artist skills. Human beings have drawn naked forms for 30,000 years, with evidence in prehistoric cave paintings in Spain and France, and on pottery and walls in ancient Greece, Egypt, and Italy. The art flourished during the Renaissance with Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of human corpses and the “Vitruvian Man.” Michelangelo painted figures nude before adding clothing. Figure drawing became essential for art students in 19th-century French academies and remains the most challenging course in art school. If you can draw the figure, the saying goes, you can draw anything.
Drawing landscapes and abstract mark-making are skills I’m glad to have, but what if I can’t draw a figure?
At the Woodstock School of Art figure-drawing classes, monitored sessions, and a biannual event known as Naked Lunch—a day of figure drawing that includes a catered noon meal—offer more than just technical practice—they also provide a comfortable space for artists, both novice and experienced, to confront the challenge of capturing the human form on paper. Through the act of drawing in the quiet sanctuary of Studio 1, participants find community, creative inspiration, and a meditative escape from the pressures of everyday life. For some, like artist-monitor Alex Rupert and model Evelyn McCarthy, figure drawing is as much about personal growth and artistic exploration as it is about honing technique.
Studio 1 is large and bright, with high ceilings and a concrete floor. Pale, overcast light flows through the tall windows on the northern wall. At the center is a small stage with a fabric-draped divan under overhead lights. Even though I arrive 20 minutes early, several people are already setting up, chatting as they adjust stools and easels. Despite the activity, the room quiets like a church.
WSA’s faculty includes renowned figure-drawing instructors like Les Castellanos and Keith Gunderson. But Thursday sessions—along with Wednesdays and Sundays—are run by friendly artist-monitors like Alex Rupert. He notices me standing near the doorway, approaches with a smile, sets up an easel for me, and shows me the snack table.
“It’s my first time doing this,” I admit. “I’m a little nervous.”
“Don’t be,” Rupert says. Three years ago, it was his first class too. Now figure drawing is his “favorite thing.”
I tell him I’ve hesitated to take figure drawing, partly because of early art experiences—getting in trouble for painting too much in first grade, feeling intimidated by a high school teacher’s loud sarcasm, and being bored by macaroni-and-glitter projects. Although I’ve recently been studying abstract, landscape, and still life painting as well as printing, I’ve hesitated to take figure drawing. Rupert nods. Even people with positive early experiences, he says, sometimes take a while to find figure drawing. Though he loved his early classes and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he didn’t start figure drawing until his artist-husband gifted him a class after they moved to the Hudson Valley in 2015. Now, it’s his calling.
WSA’s sessions are three hours long, with poses ranging from 30 seconds to an hour. Thursday sessions combine short and long poses, and I’m relieved that the poses in class will be long so I can take my time.
To offer “excellence in fine art instruction and inspire creativity in a welcoming community, building on its rich artistic lineage and unique historic setting,” is WSA’s stated mission. “For decades,” says director Nina Doyle, the school “has served as a resource for artists by offering open sketch and figure drawing classes.” These weekly sessions—which cost $65 for four weeks, or $16.25 per session—not only support the development of observational drawing skills but also foster a strong sense of community and connection among creatives.
When Rupert announces it’s time to begin, talking ceases and the room feels sacred. A lithe young woman in her 20s with long, light brown hair and a heart-shaped face emerges. She slips out of her robe and lies on her back on the divan, tucking one foot under the opposite knee and resting one hand above her hip as she dangles the other from the edge of the cushion. To me, her expression seems pensive yet determined and I wonder if she’s shy. She tips her head back and half-closes her eyes. But shy or not, her face is radiant, reminding me of the young Victorian women in the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron. I choose a hard charcoal pencil and start to sketch.
Occasionally people blend the black charcoal with a white charcoal pencil, and for longer sessions, some people use colored pastels. When I pause after a few minutes to examine what I’ve done, the divan is the only part of my drawing that I like. The model’s eyes are open now, and she seems to be looking around the room at the artists. I turn to a blank page, switch to a softer pencil, and start again. This time I use heavier, darker strokes. Although I’m worrying that I’m not getting it right, before I know it, it’s break time.
During the break, the model, now in her robe, walks around the room, chatting with artists who show her their work. I appreciate how friendly everyone is, but I’m not ready to share my tentative drawings with the model. She deserves much better. Rupert reassures me: “The thing about when you first start up—and this happened to me—is that you hear critical voices in your head. You just have to know that being an artist is about the act of doing art, not the end result—the fact that you’re doing it is the biggest thing.”
“So what should I do?” I ask.
“Just keep going,” he says. “When you get to a point where it’s just you and the model and the process and there are no voices—that’s where you want to be. Encourage yourself to be rid of those voices. Focus on line and form and light, and anatomy—you can even just work on a hand, say. Once you do that, everything’s going to change.”
Just then the model approaches. I flip the sketchbook to a clean page to hide the scrawly mess of a drawing I’ve made of her and we introduce ourselves.
She is Evelyn McCarthy, a recently certified holistic health coach from Kingston, New York, and this is her third time modeling. We laugh when I tell her it’s my first time figure drawing.
McCarthy sees modeling as a way to contemplate duality—“the observer versus the observed.” During the pandemic, she treated artistic expression as a luxury. Now, modeling reminds her of how much it matters. She admits to having felt as if she were “in survival mode” creatively for the past five years. “I completely abandoned my artistic expression,” she explains. Now, being a muse” of sorts to other artists is making her realize how much artistic expression matters.
And, as I suspected, McCarthy sometimes watches the artists watching her. “It’s very meditative,” she says. “It brings you back to your flow state, like when you were a child fiddling with things in your room, not worrying about the future or what you have to do around the house. It’s good for your mind and soul.”
Fellow WSA model Stefia Kascher, who has been modeling for about 20 years, agrees. “There are times when I most definitely enter a ‘zone,’” she says, “especially with the longer poses. Perhaps it’s a bit like what I experience when I meditate, but certainly not as intense. Yet my mind is also always running, and quite often I may be thinking about my own art projects, or ideas may be forming.”
For Kascher, “a really good figure drawing class provides a rich and infectiously creative environment, and that can be very artistically stimulating. I have to add that I love it when there’s music playing. This also helps the vibe of the class. That alone can be inspirational.”
Soon enough, it’s time to start drawing again. As McCarthy returns to the divan, the hush resumes and the voices of doubt that Rupert described begin to speak to me. To quiet them, I turn to German artist and Bauhaus figure-drawing instructor Oskar Schlemmer’s recorded method, breaking down the figure into shapes: “the square of the ribcage, the circle of the belly, the cylinder of the neck, the cylinders of the arms and lower thighs, the circles of the elbow joints, elbows, knees, shoulders, knuckles, the circles of the head, the eyes, the triangle of the nose.”
Why is learning figure-drawing such a make-or-break experience for artists? “In a nutshell,” says Gunderson, “it’s about understanding how we see things.” At first, most people begin learning to draw the figure “because you want to copy the figure or illustrate or imitate the figure as it appears in front of you. That is the goal you want to achieve. Initially, you learn about anatomy and shading and all that sort of stuff—the techniques that you use to draw the figure. That is euphemistically known as figurative formalism—but the opposite side of the coin is figurative humanism. You can think of this way: one is technique, the other is poetry.”
Eventually, Gunderson explains, as an artist, “you come to a crossroads and realize that it’s not only mimicry that figure drawing is about. Once you understand even a modicum of how to represent a box or a sphere in space, and you understand how light moves across it and about shadows and reflective light—which is all, again, figurative formalism—then you come to a point where you realize you don’t have to draw every little thing—every little toenail, every little eyelash—and you start to leave out areas and accentuate or exaggerate the areas that have more psychological impact or can draw attention.”
What makes a drawing compelling is not technique, but rather “the beholder’s share”—the collaboration between the artist and the viewer. The fourth-century BC Greek painter Apelles called his rival Protogenes a great painter because “he knew when to take his hand away,” says Gunderson. “You leave things out. What makes figure drawing so important is that it enables you to communicate more effectively, but it goes beyond mere imitation and enables the artist, in a sense, to collaborate with the viewer. That’s what the creativity component is about.” Figure drawing brings an artist to a crossroads: “You realize that this is the thing you really want to go after—or not.”
During another break I meet fellow participant John Giarrizzo, who moved to Woodstock a few years ago after retiring as an art teacher at a community college in Wyoming. Although Rupert notes that Giarrizzo is a well-known artist—a claim that’s borne out by an online search of his paintings—Giarrizzo prefers simply being known as “a guy who draws.” Like Rupert, he has built his social community from the friends he’s made at figure-drawing sessions. “For me, this is like going to Disneyland,” he says, “and I haven’t met anybody that I don’t like.”
But even though he’s a veteran at depicting figures, Giarrizzo sees it as the most challenging form of drawing.
“How so?” I ask.
“It’s really celebrating the absolute,” he says. “It’s like we’re all so afraid that we cover ourselves up.”
As I pack up, Rupert checks in one last time. I tell him drawing turned my brain off. He nods. A friend of his once came to class angry and left smiling, saying, “I’ve never had anything get rid of anxiety like drawing.”
“Yes,” I say. “There’s such a hush in this room.”
Rupert smiles. “I don’t have a synagogue, I don’t have religion. Figure drawing is spiritual. This is my church.”
Giarrizzo agrees. “The fact that we all get together and draw is like getting together and praying.”
Susan Piperato is a contributing reporter. Send correspondence to reporting@theoverlooknews.com