Exercise: Drawing Statues

On my trip into Naples for the townscapes project (22nd September) I also drew a few statues although this wasn't the next in  my order of exercises I thought I'd take advantage as there are so many statues in the centre of Naples.  Unfortunately I had underestimated the curiosity and sociability of Neapolitans. I was constantly interrupted. A little girl came up to say how good she thought I was at drawing. Another man wanted to know why I was drawing the statue from behind. I felt totally self conscious and embarrassed. I felt the need to tell everyone that "I'm not an artist I'm just learning to draw" and to apologise for how bad my drawings were.  In fact the drawings were rather poor and I think this may be partly the result of my intense discomfort affecting my concentration. My original intention had been to draw this statue of a Roman emperor in the context of his background - he is overlooking the bay of Naples and gesturing towards the sea . Initially I didn't even manage to include his feet let-alone the impressive backdrop. In most of these the statue is much more short and squat than he actually was. 

I had brought my husband (Luigi) and son (Luca) with me to try to get me through the initial fear of drawing in public. This wasn't necessarily a good move as I felt the need to keep checking they were OK and felt guilty about them being bored hanging around. Things went from bad to worse when  Luigi started arguing with one of the street vendors who was bring to sell him a necklace which I really didn't want. (he ended up buying it anyway). Subsequent to this another man came up - took one look at my drawing and said, "You've drawn the head too small" (in Italian) " In reality he was a big-head (testone)". This was probably intended as friendly constructive criticism. Unfortunately in my state of anxiety and embarrassment this served only to deflate and frustrate me even more. I decided to move on from that spot.

On the way back to the car I briefly sketched the lions in Piazza Plebiscito. I also found some equestrian statues which I really liked just around the corner near the car park. This was a slightly less crowded area so I managed to draw these. I particularly liked the lines of movement on the second statue. It seemed to me that there was an explosive force behind this horse which would burst out if the man were to let go of him. A few days later on a larger sheet of cartridge paper I redrew a simplified version of this statue and 'exploded' the horse with my rubber.

This was not an entirely successful outing although I was happier with the drawings of the equestrian statues than anything else. However I am acutely aware that anxiety and embarrassment at drawing in public is a problem that I will need to overcome if I am to progress as it certainly has an adverse affect on the quality of my work.

Edit: Drawing statues revisited. I made a trip to the archaeological museum in Naples on 23rd November. I have included the sketches I made on that date below with my original attempts at drawing statues for comparison as I think I have made some progress but have written up this trip separately on the date when I did it. Link to this separate post here ("Drawing Statues Revisited")