Nude v. Naked

So an interesting combination of things has led me to this title. First off, is that today in drawing class we had to draw a model in the nude using gesture lines with charcoal and chalk and second was that after a comment on the photo of one of my drawings, I started thinking about my last History class (taught by Ingrid Rowland -- be jealous) where Rowland had been talking about the difference between "naked" and "nude" when it came to statues.
Now by definition, they are the same but in the ancient times, being naked was more of a disgrace but being nude as a statue, had a certain dignity to it. When you look at ancient statues and compare them to actual people, you notice several things. One, is that while their body, especially concerning shoulders and hips are proportionate to an adult, some other parts (you can probably think of which) are actually much smaller and their only hair is facial and on their head. The reason for this is because of the message that they wanted to portray. Their body parts did not define them, they defined their body parts. When it came to statues, the head was as is, for they believed that your facial looks were your personality but their bodies were typically what they defined as "perfect". That's why with some statues you get some really old heads on young looking bodies. So all of that basically defines what "nude" is.
"Naked", on the other hand, has more of a vulnerability to it. Things are as is, not as you would like them to be. And because of that things are not perfect, even though they are proportionate. It's strange but really interesting to think about.

Ok. So now that that is out of the way, about my drawing class. It was GREAT. I had really been looking forward to this class since it has literally been years since I last worked with charcoal and I have never had the opportunity to have an actual model come in for me to draw from. I was really eager and so I sat in front (also because I'm really short and can barely ever see). We did gestural drawings, meaning the goal was movement rather than lines. We were to draw from the inside out. I had a little trouble for a while, since I first drew from up to down rather than from gesture to refinement but my Professor made no hesitation in literally grabbing my hand and moving it up and down the page to get the gesture. At one point he even just came over and rubbed my drawing off to show me the right way. Some people might be embarrassed by that but I was wayyyy to eager to learn to mind. Sometimes you just gotta start over to learn better.
The model did several different, energetic poses which required the contraction and elongation of muscles. This gave us many wonderfully varied gestures which we did our best to bring to life. Her poses ran from 30 seconds to 5 minutes, which gave us different kinds of refinements depending on what we could fit in.
For as long as I could remember I have been obsessed with the human form, the way muscles contract and elongate, the way life can lie within a series of curves. I have always felt that the strongest shape is the human form. There is nothing quite like it. My professor is an artist, not an architect and so in school he actually took anatomy classes as a requirement to learn how the body works and is put together. I'm highly considering taking an anatomy class just for that. So many things are based off of the human form and architecture is just one of those major things. He also mentioned that we could higher the model on our own time since we only get to do this for one class. I think I'm going to do that too with a bunch of people.
It was really great working with a model. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

My two favorites.