Life Drawing in Bristol

      I have recently changed jobs which means I have a lot more evenings free and I have used this time to try and make the most of living in Bristol and trying out new things! The last time I did any life drawing was in my second year of university 4 years ago and even normal drawing I am very out of practise. 

      I found that there were circus themed life drawing sessions at The Island in the city centre where they have a circus training space. As someone who takes aerial circus classes already I was really excited to try this and me and my friend Holly decided to go and flex our slightly underused drawing muscles.

      We went to two of the three sessions, each started with fairly short poses using rope, silks or trapeze. I was intrigued to see what types of poses we would do knowing that even posing for photos on circus equipment hurts a lot as there are many narrow pressure points and uncomfortable grips. I liked the way the models wrapped the equipment around them and used it to create interesting wraps and shapes for us to draw. 

      These sessions were untutored, which was nice because I am very out of practise, everyone just got on with their own thing. People were using all different materials, some just with sketchbooks some with large sheets of paper. There was no pressure with people walking around looking at your work it just felt nice to make marks and shapes and not worry about if something worked or not. 

      The people who ran the circus classes also have a regular spot at Cafe Kino on Gloucester road on a Monday evening. This week we decided to check it out.

We had two models, the one at the start was pregnant which was really interesting and beautiful to draw. I tend to prefer drawing women because they have such fabulous curves (sorry men).

      This session was a little different from the circus ones because we were able to draw longer poses, the two below were 20 and 40 minutes which gave a little more time to focus on adding more detail and working on the shapes. I will forever hate drawing hands, feet and faces, but maybe if I go to a few more sessions this will improve over time. 

      If you want to try out the monday life drawing sessions you can follow their facebook page here. It runs 6-8pm and costs £5 for the two hours with some basic materials available if you don't have your own. The circus sessions may be running again soon if you just keep an eye on their facebook page.

Wild Place Project

      I read a blog post a while ago about photography tips to get you inspired. One of those tips was to make the effort to keep going back to the same place a number of times to get yourself more familiar and to challenge yourself to create new images with the same subject. I went to Wild Place in Bristol at the start of April, it is kind of a cross between a zoo (with much larger enclosures than Bristol zoo in the city) a kids play area and wild gardens. 

      I really enjoyed walking round the area as it is very open and quiet, even if it is just off of the motorway! There are lots of wild flowers all around with lots of different colours and they also have their own gardens which are maintained by staff. The walk round takes you to different animal enclosures - the meerkats and lemurs are the most fun I think. There is also a lot for kids to do including lots of mini playgrounds with tyres and dens and also a barefoot walk with lots of textures and materials, including mud, for kids to run through. 

      I signed up for an annual pass after the end of my first trip and now I have been back twice. I have only been in the week but even though there are lots of kids, the area is so spread out it has felt incredibly quiet and nice to just walk around alone and explore in the woods and gardens. 

      Each time I have visited I have taken a different lense with me which I think has helped get different images each time. With my Nikon D5100 I use:

Sigma 17-50mm f2.8
Nikon 35mm Prime f1.8
Nikon 55-200mm f4-5.6

      Todays shots were with the zoom lense, which was interesting as it helped me get some super close up of animals faces like the meerkat below:

      The lemurs are in an enclosure you can walk around which means I could get really close to them. There have been a few new babies over the past couple of months which has been good to capture. 

      These brown lemurs (feel free to help me out with the species) are very friendly, I got the photo of this one in the tree just before one poo-ed on my arm... not so fun!

      As well as the larger animals I have found this area great for getting up really close to flowers and smaller bugs. I think I may have to get a macro lense or extension tubes at some point so I can get even closer!