Friday Drawing Group

2011 -2016

Our Friday Drawing Group has commenced its fifth year of morning sessions. Every second week we have a life model and in the week between some of us meet to draw. Our group has included other participants at times and we have enjoyed drawing in each others’ work spaces but Stewart St Paddington is the more usual location.

This exhibition includes works by Christina Beaumont, Jan Hodge, Jennifer Ledingham, Robyn Yeoman 

Love of drawing is what has brought us together. We also value the discipline of life drawing. We need to be physically present with the group and the model, to respond for the time of the pose and to make the work there and then. It is like instrumental practice for the musician: the physical necessity to keep tuned. Our advantage is we have a keep-sake, a work on paper to show for it. We could all paper the walls, as Robyn as done, but that might seem repetitive. And it is, but each pose is new and in that moment like music.

The process of making the life study is what is significant. Being brought together to do it is empowering, exhilarating. This is a shared experience of precise concentration, unique for artists who usually work alone.

When we do not have a nude model we may do a clothed study posing for each other, or we go outdoor sketching or pursue our own interests. Our styles vary from quite realistic studies to abstraction and conceptual work using a variety of media.

It was at the National Art School in Darlinghurst that the experience of drawing was emphasised as the anchor for the practice of art. Life drawing was a fundamental in the course. And fundamental to the work of all these four artists who studied there. 

Christina Beaumont is currently teaching drawing and calligraphy in three Sydney evening colleges. She has an extensive career in art having studied at schools in England and Australia. 

Jenny Ledingham commenced her career by setting up her ceramics studio and teaching ceramics in secondary schools as well as TAFE in Sydney. Since retiring she has revived her interest in painting with study at NAS where she did her Honours year in drawing in 2010. Now this Friday drawing group usually meet in her studio in Paddington.

Jan Hodge, a physiotherapist, was also a potter, and worked professionally for two studio potters in London, later studying sculpture while living there.  Retiring from a second career in Real Estate, she obtained a BFA from NAS, and found a new focus in painting and drawing and an even deeper involvement in the art life of Sydney. 

Robyn Yeoman, a scenic artist and illustrator, has a keen interest in industrial subjects for drawing and painting. She graduated from NAS in 2008 and has three times been a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize at the AGNSW.