drawing in the cold and st. nicholas' church

Drawing is our final class of the week. Technically, it's an LAR class, but really it's just an introductory drawing class, because none of us have really had a serious drawing class before. We started off drawing white cardboard cubes, progressed to perspective for one week, and then spent two weeks on figure drawing. Our model was approximately 65 years old, spoke no english, and was fairly vocal (having our drawing instructor translate). She enjoyed hearing herself sigh, too.

After that, we've been drawing mostly outside views or details around different parts of Prague. We've also drawn in a modern art gallery, and today in St. Nicholas' church on the lesser town side of the river. Now only one of those places that we've drawn in this past month has even pretended to have heat, since most of them were outdoor locations, that makes sense. The Manes art gallery did have radiators, but we only went there after drawing for an hour or two outside on the island where the gallery is, so I was still not very thawed out while I was drawing the spaces inside it. And it's Prague, and the few weeks of "warm spring" weather we had a while back have passed in favor of the cooler more normal end of winter weather. Today the high was 5 degrees Celsius, 41 degrees Fahrenheit, gray and windy. That, combined with maybe a few threatening raindrops has been typical for our drawing excursions.

Today, sitting and sketching in the (amazingly gorgeous and extravagantly opulent baroque style) church with my finger-less gloves, my ski jacket, and fleece hat on, seeing my breath in front of me, I was reminded of my optimism from the first few colder drawing outings. I remember thinking "well, if I learn to draw steadily with frozen hands, hopefully that will mean my lines will be extra straight and precise when my fingers actually have feeling in them!" The lines turned out pretty well, today, on the scroll detail I sketched. My straight lines were better than my curved ones, though, which was probably unfortunate for this particular church. Our teacher told us that the style of Baroque used often in central Europe and exemplified in St. Nicholas' is dynamic baroque. Basically everything is a curve, everything implies motion and invites you to move both with your eyes and physically. So there is almost no straight, parallel surfaces, certainly not on the details (which was all I attempted to draw) They're all curving and swirling and bending and angling different directions.

It's an amazing church, I'm going to have to go back with my camera. It also has a massive organ, (I think actually two) on which someone began to rehearse before we left, so I also plan on going back for one of their organ concerts. This is also a good church to visit because it's mostly for tourists so you can walk all around the main floor and there's part of the upstairs gallery open, also, so you can see the architecture and frescoes from a different angle. It was really amazing, as I believe I've mentioned before. Well, my hands have warmed up now after walking back to studio, it's time for dinner. Enough reflections on cold hands and beautiful churches, I'm hungry.