Bad Mama: On Life Drawing

Mar 22

Working on life drawing. 

Except I can’t. 

We’re having a massive spring snow dump, and the snow outside is too deep for little legs to slog through to get to school, which means my boys are home this morning. Fridays are short days anyway, so it’s only until lunch time.  I thought, I'll do them a favour, right? It's warm and dry here. There's no point in them struggling through thigh-high snow piles, getting cold and wet, for a few short hours. I gave them the TV remote and disappeared into my studio to work.

The studio is set off from the rest of the house, with a laundry room and hallway in between me and the kitchen, so I have some semblance of privacy here. I figured it would be fine to finish a life drawing I’d started yesterday. I’d begun it in graphite and wasn’t having much luck with it, until this morning when I decided to use charcoal. That was going better. Until it wasn’t. Because my boys are home.

Which I forgot. Because they’re not actually supposed to be here. You know? 

 I understand trying to keep kids innocent, and I agree, for the most part. Except, I’m an artist. I’ve been drawing naked people for two decades, and this is my studio. You’d think that, in the sacred heart of my sacred space, I should be able to practice the tools of my craft. But no. That’s not a thing when you have kids. Something no one told me when I decided to have them.  

I was engrossed in the drawing, when I heard giggling behind me. 

“Mama! Why are you drawing naked people?"

And then, the kicker.

"Mama! I can see his balls....they're so HANGY!"

Oh. My. Word.

This is the point where you’d insert a face palm emoji. And then write an entire blog post about your latest parenting fail.  

I quickly minimized the window but it was too late. My sketchbook was on my lap and that doesn’t get put away that fast.  My boys were standing behind me, getting an eyeful of a random stranger from a life-drawing site—a very naked stranger. They saw everything, in high res detail.  

“Look at his hanging parts!” My oldest was in stitches. “I can see his balls!” Because when you're five, you can never say the word "balls" too many times in a day.

Detour: My boys are seven and five, and they’re obsessed with balls lately. Not the kind you throw, either. The very word is apt to send them into helpless fits of hilarity. I’ve caught my oldest writing the word “balls” all over the paper he was supposed to be 'coloring' on. Because....boys. And their private parts. The rest I haven't come to understand yet.

I tried to ease the damage by pointing out that my sketch had no details in the pubic area—I tend to keep thing as generic as possible down there, since I’m just after the form of the body anyway—but my youngest quickly refuted my distraction. 

“No way! I can still see his hangy parts! Right there, mama! Look!” 

Eye roll. Apparently my generic square wasn’t generic enough for the five-year-old. 

“Well, don’t you have hangy parts?” I asked. “I thought that was what boys had.” 

This cracked them both up.  

“And girls have no-no squares, because their parts are square!” My oldest cackled. As you can tell, they haven’t been completely corrupted. He’s in for a heck of an eye-opening some day, though. 

I wanted to finish my drawing, so I shooed them out. I watched them disappear, and I actually thought they were in the other part of the house, but I underestimated their determination.  As soon as I opened the window again and picked up my sketchbook, I heard giggling. I turned around to find my youngest son hanging over my shoulder, watching me wide-eyed. They're blindingly fast, these wee monsters. 

“Why do you draw naked people, mama?”

How do you explain to a five-year-old why artists draw the human form? It’s not possible. The only thing they hear out of your entire monologue is the word “naked.” Don't ask how I know this.

I tried to send him out again, only for him to reappear a minute later, giggling furiously. “I want to see you drawing the naked man! Come on, open the picture!"

Lord, have mercy on me.

At that point, I gave up. I closed the window and put the drawing away. If it wasn’t finished before, it was now. 

This is what happens when you are raising free-range children.

I’m of the belief that my children should be raised the way I was—we had a rabbit-ear antenna, three TV channels (one was French, and one was religious programming), and we didn’t have dial-up internet until I was almost out of high school. We had to do other things, and we did. We played outside, we read, we drew, we built things, we worked. We literally ran free all over town. We're all extremely creative adults now. That's what I want for my own children.

But now that I’m an adult, I have one morning a week free to work. That's a morning I’m desperate to be mostly distraction free. And able to draw naked people if I want to. Which doesn’t happen when my kids decide to get off the screen. Because being off the screen means they go play, and apparently, “playing” means hanging over their mother’s shoulder getting an eyeful of whatever bad thing she’s drawing at the moment.  

This is the offending drawing, by the way:

 It's not going to get any more finished than that, because it's already been sprayed. I'm not even going to try picking it up again. On to the next one, and I'll probably keep it clothed.