The human figure has been the subject of drawings since prehistoric times. I can confirm it is often most challenging but rewarding. Today’s guest is an artist who does lots of work in male figure drawing. His approach is unique and fun. I am pleased to share my conversation UK artist Pete Shorney.
Experience 063 UK Artist Pete Shorney on
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Ricky McEachern (00:02): The human figure has been the subject of drawing. Since prehistoric times, I can confirm it is often most challenging and rewarding. Today's guest is an artist who does lots of work in male figure drawing. His approach is unique and fun. I am pleased to share my conversation with UK artists, Pete shorty, or welcome Pete.
Pete Shorney (00:47): Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on the on the podcast.
Ricky McEachern (00:50): You're very welcome. You're looking very sharp in those suspenders. Oh, this is my slipping about gear. And as we get into the winter months and I can get to our waistcoats again, since we fantastic. Well, when we did our call, we did a brief get to know each other call yesterday on zoom. And I saw your suspenders thinking. I think I want to wear suspenders too, but it's great to stick with a basic t-shirt.
Ricky McEachern (01:23): Well, I'm excited to talk to you. You are involved from an artistic standpoint into something that I find very interesting, which is figure drawing. So figure drawing personally is something I don't have a lot of experience with. I did take a class at the Florence Academy of art in Florence, Italy, and figure drawing with a live model was a part of what we did. So that was very eye opening to learn about, about that. We would have that as part of our class in addition where our school was a live model came in every week at night and people could just come in, artists from around Florence could just come in and bring whatever medium they wanted. And people could draw paint. And what have you. And then here in Chicago, where I live there is actually because it's such a large city with such a large population and people with so many different interests. There are lots of places to go where there are live figures. Yes. So tell me about how you got into that part of your artwork. Well, I was always so sketching and doodling and doing bits and pieces and Saifai and fence the Lewis was the things that trying to find something that spoke to me and that I enjoy, I enjoyed drawing, but he's often quite unfocused, but a friend of mine just said again, until I joined pass CVR, it's
Pete Shorney (03:00): Sort of, semi-regularly reject to come along. I think I really enjoyed the experience of you had a focus. You had a particular thing you had to draw, which in this case, it's a, it's a human figure. You have a room full of people, all committed to doing the same thing. It's wonderful to focus. And I started to enjoy the process of understanding what I was looking at, then breaking it down to, okay, I need to understand how the body moves. You have a physical person there, so you can see the weight and depth of, excuse me, weight and depth of them. And then
Pete Shorney (03:47): Then became sort of sensual as well
To meet the model is I've got to meet the artists and, and I, it just became a lovely sort of group and community that was so encouraging. And so inspiring that it kind of developed into, I enjoy drawing the figure. I enjoy drawing the male figure particularly, and most of my work is drawing a male news. And I just wanted to explore something that was, it has
Pete Shorney (04:24): A technicality to it as a technical
Pete Shorney (04:26): We'll feel about it, but with the human body, they're sort of softness. And I think I like the, it's not always a sexual thing. I don't think it's necessarily people going to love drawing because it's sexual, but I think there's, you can't deny it's a sensuality to it. So the human body naturally has that. And it also kind of in a way, for me, it kind of throws off all that stuff about your own body a little bit. So you're, we will, we, most of us have a insecurity of our bodies and a weird relationship with our bodies. But when you see a model that's not necessarily particularly muscular or just, just an average human body of different sizes and builds, and what have you, it kind of takes you away from those expectations of what a good or perfect body is that they're working. They're doing their job, that they're carrying the brain around. You know, they're doing credible, wonderful things all the time. And I kind of love that
Ricky McEachern (05:33): Before you started figures, were you drawing from life or your imagination? Not often mind imagination Pete Shorney (05:41): Or I would look at pop culture staff draw, you know, let him focus on or enterprise or something like that. Summit was, I love spaceships as well. So that was kind of like fun to have a foray into that. So I make stuff up there, but that was fantastical. And one thing I noticed, I started posting stuff on Instagram and it would be up to us. That's nice. That's okay. You know, and I'm like, yeah, but I knew it was, there was something like a connection that was missing. I didn't feel then if I was being honest with what I was drawing. Okay. So doing it for fun, I had to draw something and I would go to things that are pretty general and family friendly and nice. But there wasn't, there was something missing. There was some sort of spark missing, I think, projects.
Ricky McEachern (06:41): And when you started doing the mail form, what was it that was missing? Did you discover it? Can you articulate that? Pete Shorney (06:49): Yeah, I, I think the difference was the models themselves, because I could see a living, breathing human in front of me and I would start to work with models on one-to-one sessions quite closely and kind of encourage a bit of a chat and a bit of a discussion. And, and I would talk to the models just general. It could be about something or nothing. It could be what they're into, like to watch TV, or they're talking about art and projects they've been doing themselves. And I realized it was that there was some, there was some in the back and forth.
Ricky McEachern (07:32): Cool. You were making a connection with your subject.
Pete Shorney (07:35): Exactly. And, and I, I think that's important to me. I can work from photos, like work from photos that are given to me on the occasional times I do commissions, but talking to a model and getting to know a model, a model is to become friends, obviously, as you work with people over time. And I think it has an effect and what I put into the image and there's, there's a level of care and warmth. I think that comes through connected with, with a model. I feel it comes through in the artwork, even if it's not always obvious.
Ricky McEachern (08:11): So you're working with models. One-On-One now you're D you're, is that correct?
Pete Shorney (08:16): Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I mean, I will say I still do remote life drawing groups, but occasionally I'll work models virtually as well. Now,
Ricky McEachern (08:25): When you're doing an in person session with a model how long did, how long did they hold a pose?
Pete Shorney (08:33): My maximum, I liked I've gone up to about 30, 40 minutes, but I'm also kind of an ingredient in the sense of, I want a lot of poses and if you're booking them for two hours or so, I sometimes I'd get a lot in. So I would say my average would be 15 minute poses
Ricky McEachern (08:49): When I was at the Florence Academy of art that I mentioned, and I got my first to figure drawings.
Pete Shorney (08:56): So MBE itself,
Ricky McEachern (08:58): You definitely need to check it out. It was, it was a great experience. And obviously living in Florence is amazing. And as a, and I'm a cook. So being, being around all of that, very simple cooking really changed my cooking, but my exposure was, it was all long poses. So I mentioned that a model would come in on Thursday nights and they were there from six to nine and it was a single post. So I, they probably had a break every 30 minutes, but it was essentially, you know, three hour, two and a half hours of a single pose. And then the other thing that we did was we actually had a class project where we had a model come in four days for four for the afternoon and did a single pose. So it was a single pose for four times for 16 hours minus breaks of a single pose. So the expectations in the way that I approached drawing the figure is not quick 15 minutes. So when I go to model, that's the reason why I asked the question, because when I go to stuff here in Chicago, they they're doing 10 minute poses. And I'm like, what? Like, I can't do anything in 10 minutes, but I'm going to have to learn.
Pete Shorney (10:19): Yeah, well, that's it. A friend of mine runs a course and he does a, he knows it annoys me, but he'll do two minutes of ten second quick change poses that people get dynamic lines. And that's the idea is to speed the mind up. It drives me up the wall and I can't do it. It's a scribbles to me. And if it's a scribbles, from my perspective, I'm disappointed with what I've done, even though it's not wrong, but it's just not, I can't get something from that. The more time that sent the first time I did an hour long pose at a session. Cause I was so used to doing five to 10 to 15 minute poses. I did the whole figure in 20 minutes and what do I do with the rest of the time? And it ended up being, I started to draw, and this is probably part of the purpose of it.
Pete Shorney (11:12): As you draw negative space and some of the objects around it and some drapery, and you start to notice that a detail of the foot that you not realized. And then you start to take a step back from the figure, see all in one hole, ah, maybe that is slightly off. The, obviously the motor will move, but there's still certain things that you need to do to do that. Does that make sense in the overall image? Because I think that's the other thing as well. It's a time you need to take to see, you have to look. And when you have five, 10 minutes, I can jump in quite quickly, but you need a bit of breathing space to capture figures, depth, and to get the shading and to see the muscle and even see when the breathing and the rise and fall of the chest or the stomach changes as they adjust slightly. It's fascinating stuff. And that's a lovely thing with a, with a live model. It is it's changing and makes you it's changing it and it makes you concentrate. And I think that's one of the benefits of it. And that's one of the main reasons why I would say for anybody doing a least one live drawing class will change your perspective on how you approach almost anything you draw.
Ricky McEachern (12:38): I would agree. How has your drawing experience, your live drawing experience affected your other drawings?
Pete Shorney (12:46): It's improved my accuracy. I might need to find that
Ricky McEachern (12:50): I tell people about figure drawing and why it's so important to an artist. And I tell this to people who aren't artists, is it, you know, being an artist is you are looking at something. Normally you're looking, excuse me, you're normally looking at something. And then you are trying to map that, you know, on the canvas with your hand, if you're doing a landscape, if you are off a little bit, you're not going to know like your brain, isn't going to register it. If you're doing a figure, you don't need to be an art teacher to know that if it is off the tiniest amount you are going, anyone is going to know. So you're almost like a builtin art teacher. Now this causes a lot of problems because, and we didn't talk about this, but it can be very frustrating and discouraging because you can see your inadequacies as a, as an illustrator drawer very quickly when you're doing the figure and it gets very, it gets frustrating very easily. However, if you can get that accuracy down, it's going to improve whatever you do as an artist. So now when you're doing a landscape, you've kind of rewired your brain, so to speak from doing these figures so that you're able to map it.
Pete Shorney (14:11): Basically there's two access. One is you're learning and you're constantly developing new things. But as that goes up, what's going up quicker is your ability to recognize where things aren't working. We are getting better and we are learning and we are picking things up. But also what we're learning is you've got things to compare it to now. And as those two things combine, you actually find yourself going. This sucks. This is terrible. I can't, it's the worst thing I've ever done in my life. And you can show it to anybody else. I go, no, that's actually, that's really an improvement what you did before. But your perspective to it changes.
Ricky McEachern (14:49): One of the things that you just mentioned that made me very excited, as you just talked about the process of learning something new and where you're acquiring skills. And there's a sense of maybe excitement that you have these new skills, but then at a certain point, you realize, as you see other people doing the same thing, you switched to a comparison mode. So it's oftentimes it can start kind of high. And then it kind of goes along. I find that in my life, in all areas particularly as someone who I'm always trying something new and I'm always looking for the next thing that's going, you know, that I'm going to be great at. And you know, and I think it's very common, but you always have that situation. I'm finding where, you know, I did it with my podcast. When I first started my podcast, I was so excited and I'm a podcaster. I'm amazing. At some point I got to the point where I'm looking at other podcasts and I'm looking at what they're doing and looking at how they're performing. And I'm like, Ugh, you know, I'm not amazing. I'm, you know, and it's this way. But anytime you learning something new, you're going to have to experience that.
Pete Shorney (16:09): Yes. But I don't think that ever really goes away anyway, because you were always learning, even within one particular track, you're taking a one particular area you want to do better and you're never going to stop learning. And you're never going to start making mistakes with it and you're never going to stop just trying to progress. And I think that's why that's important because as you say, it's comparison and comparison always will trip us up. It's it's never going to give us anything other than why can't I do it that way you don't, you don't,
Ricky McEachern (16:48): It can be used in a way that is helpful.
Pete Shorney (16:53): Oh yeah, no, I'm, I'm, I'm saying that. Yeah. I mean that, of course, but I think when we think of comparison, it's usually the looking over the next desk going, you know, and I think that's what I'm thinking of. What I, when I think of comparison, it's often been negative, but you're quite right in, it depends on frame of mind. It depends what some else is doing. It can also be very inspirational and there are two sides to that coin. It could be two sides of the very same coin. When you look at a piece of art and a few times I've done this, that's so amazing. Oh my God, I can see how they've worked colored Stu this. And if I try that, we're getting more new minutes. So that part of the figure, Oh my God, why do I bother at the same time? It's a weird complex thing. So yeah. Comparison. If you're trying to reach for something, you do have to compare. Yeah. But also you have to be a bit kinder to yourself and not be like you don't expect to achieve it straight away.
Ricky McEachern (17:57): I agree. And I think that is a core, like a very key lesson that I wish I had learned younger, you know, there's many, you know, now that I'm 52, I look back at like all the things that I wish I had known as a, you know, a younger person and being able to manage, comparing in the way that you just described, because it is two sides of the same coin. There's looking at it for inspiration guidance direction, but also you need to be careful that you are not using it in a negative way. And I think that figuring that figuring how to use that is real. I definitely have not mastered it. It sounds like you have not either, but I think that is right. I think that's a really important thing for people to deal with when the other thing is, that's something that people have always dealt with, you know? It's something that, I mean, right now we have social media, so we have a lot of, more, more visibility into what other people are doing, but that mental process, even before there was, you know, in the 1920s or whatever, people were still, their brains worked the same way.
Pete Shorney (19:07): Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, that isn't that, yeah. It's no, I certainly haven't mastered it and I will be caught out with it and it is, that's how I see it caught out. I catch myself out going, Oh, if I'm going to be struggling with something or I'm tired or a bit hungry or whatever, somebody just gets it at the wrong point. And yet you showed a slump. But I do think that part of it is that you just have to take yourself out of that somehow try not to spiral or just leave it, walk away from it and come back.
Ricky McEachern (19:52): Let's talk about your inspirations. Can you tell me about your inspirations for the figures figure during yet?
Pete Shorney (20:00): So let me say started off with the life drawing, but as you start picking up reference points, I suppose, from my youth young gay man growing up in quite small town or small village, actually, there isn't much access to it. So you'd see things on TV late at night, and there'd be talking often about access to what to, to, well, there were seeing no internet we're talking in like the eighties, nineties. So,
Ricky McEachern (20:31): So no access, no access to gay culture.
Pete Shorney (20:34): Not really, no as the, what would be on TV. So we had we had, we had four channels and one was channel four and it was a lots of arts programming and they would often show things like Derek Jarman, Sebastian, or things like this, and shows about queer culture of like the hanky code and stuff about cruising or even things about publications and old imagery and Finland and then, Oh, the good old days, the good old days. So I think that was seeping in, but still very closeted. And I was still very ashamed of being interested by it. But it was in my head and I, and there's something about that that's, it's sort of underground in a good way. Does that make sense? Like, it's, it's our secret and it's for us and it's not broadly known or it's kind of yeah. Kind of exciting underground kind of.
Ricky McEachern (21:44): Yeah. And that's why I said the good old days, because that was, you know, this is something that I recently spoke about on my previous podcast with Joe Dayo and astrologer, who is about 10 years older than me. And we talked about
Pete Shorney (21:57): Gay culture.
Ricky McEachern (21:59): You know, when I came out, it was this secret special world. It was, there was no mainstream aspect to it, which had a lot of negative impacts, but also it was something that you felt like
Pete Shorney (22:12): It was exclusive. It did feel a bit like that. And then I suppose on top of that I very much enjoy the Victorian era in the, in the aesthetic sense of the Victorian era, but also what it brings is that's almost like tenfold where everything was secret and underground and very illegal to be gay. And I, I love seeing about that imagery of where you'd have been swapping around images of nudes of other men. And they're imagined very dog-eared photos of the swept around pornography basically, but they're actually quite naive and quite sweet. A lot of it when you look at it now and that somehow kind of merged into how I approach how I draw, because some of it is that kind of the beefcake photography and that stuff comes through, but also this lovely sepia toned world where a fancy world is built and laid on top of that is a fascinating fascination with Greek mythology.
Pete Shorney (23:27): And of course the classical artwork that comes up through that, which has its own undertones, homo erotica. So this all kind of merged up into this into my sensitive, trying to capture a kind of mix of it, looking like a kind of fantasy world represented by it sort of being underground and a project I just did, which was kind of through the keyhole type pack, which I did, which was amazing. Thank you. Yeah, what the Butler saw probably speaking, and it's essentially it's for a piece of artwork of four different models and they are reminiscent of that kind of Victorian. One's a, a gentleman on dressing and, and another will be based on the Greek myths and another will be another mythological scene, but sort of fairly pastoral background and plays around with those ideas of the classics, helping to interpret the erotic.
Pete Shorney (24:39): And the other part is the, what the buttons or which the series of mini cards of a model I worked with that was solely undressing. Now what the Butler saw machines, where anybody doesn't know a Victorian device where people put a penny in the slot at the seaside and they peeked through, and there will be a video of quick stills of a woman taking their clothes off. As she got to corsetry, you'd run out of money and have to put another penny in. And that's kind of the idea. So it's kind of a bit seedy and a bit, you know, sexist and a bit dated. But I went to flip that round to looking at this man taking his clothes off. But the lovely thing with that is the idea is you're still only able to connect with another man sexually through the gap of either a device or from some distance, the ID, you could just go somewhere and do it. They did have Molly houses and they did have things like tea rooms it's flat, but you still have a distance and a disconnect from other gay men. And that kind of played into this in some way.
Ricky McEachern (25:57): The things that I liked about the, what the Butler saw series was the frame. So talk about that.
Pete Shorney (26:06): Yeah. This was just, I was putting this back together and because, excuse me, I always tend to make things difficult for myself sometimes. So I could just do a set of lumpy images to send out pretty happy with them. Good for them to go. I thought, well, the idea is that people could kind of either using the slot machine or peering through a key hole at someone and dressing, which is super sleazy, very, probably in many ways, but it was a, a kind of to buy into the concept of it to understand it. And so I made a cutout and keep printable PDF that you can just make your own small frame where you cut out the key hole and you put whichever card you want from the, what the is or series in. And you can just display that on your desk or what have you. And it's just a fun, little bit of extra silliness, really.
Ricky McEachern (27:13): I thought it was so cute and clever and fun. It reminded me of pinups. I know, I suggested that you listened to the pinups episode.
Pete Shorney (27:22): Yes.
Ricky McEachern (27:24): Like it was taking you know, fun, sexy male imagery, and then combine it in a playful, fun way of delivery. And that's, that's actually, that's why I reached out to you because someone found that on Instagram and said, Rick, I'm eager to know more about this Pete guy on. So I looked at it, he sent me a message saying that I looked at it and that's when I reached out.
Pete Shorney (27:54): Oh, that's fantastic. That's lovely to know. Yeah, it was, it was essentially, I thought as I was doing it, I was making them, I was actually going to print out loads and make them myself and my husband's going take a step back from it. You're putting in so much work into this project. You're actually, it's becoming all about the side thing, but if I just let people do it themselves, they can print it off their own thing. They can make their own frame. I just thought it was, yeah. It's a cute idea.
Ricky McEachern (28:25): And also having people do it themselves, I think there's something about in the same way with pinups, how you have to assemble the poster, it makes people part of the experience. And it's a sense of engagement, which I think is fun.
Pete Shorney (28:39): Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that I do how social media can work for it. And I, my Instagram account, I do enjoy putting stuff on it, but there is a part of me cause how you can do well. I, I did my own small scenes ages ago of my life drawings called gentleman's perusal. So I liked the actual tangible and I, and I, I would like to be able to produce something. I definitely have the followership yet, or I don't know if I have that level of interest yet where people would be very engaged with it. I want to create something would be like a book or something that stands out as something crafty and fun. But it also engages you in this kind of immersive Victorian world. In some way I would, I'm still working on that.
Pete Shorney (29:33): I have this Edward Gorey did Ellis illustrated, a popup theater of Dracula, which I have, and it's lovely. And it's got all the characters in there. You can build the theater, it's fat, and it's just a, one of those cardboard toy theaters when it's so of its time. And it's so atmospheric. And to just to make something along those lines, to take the artwork away from a flat image, to being part of something that someone could immerse themselves in it, some things I'm still ruminate every now and again. And how have I turned this into something real in a very common,
Ricky McEachern (30:15): Well, when you figure out what that's going to be, you can come back on and we can talk about it. Pete Shorney (30:21): That would be amazing.
Ricky McEachern (30:24): Pete, can you suggest a couple of things for people that are getting into drawing?
Pete Shorney (30:31): Yep. I can. At the moment, of course, we're still in a situation where we're doing a lot of drawing sessions remotely. So do have a look for, if you're on Instagram or Twitter and find hashtag life drawing, you don't even have to find things in your area anymore. You can actually find someone in your time zone that works for you all the time zone that suits you anytime day or night, you'll find something. And the lovely thing is you don't have that nervousness of going to a group on your own or having to take a friend with you. You they're usually very cool groups. They know that they're going to get people from different parts of the world and they're happy you're there. And just to, to draw as a piece of advice for anybody like drawing. So it's talking about being frustrated with yourself as you learn, try and keep your sketches in a sketchbook, one sketch book at a time and date that sketchbook. So every time you draw a particular session, date, the session, I've keep it as a diary. And that's my best advice. Cause when you get to the end of that sketchbook, and you're still questioning, if you've managed to develop anything, look at the first page. Wonderful. And I swear to you, you have done, you've improved. Keep going. That's my advice.
Ricky McEachern (31:51): Wonderful. That's great advice. Yeah. I think that people just need to not be freaked out when they're not good at figure drawing because like anything, when you first start, you can, you know, anytime you start something new, your skill level is low. What's different about figure drawing is it's really apparent.
Pete Shorney (32:15): Yeah. Straight away.
Ricky McEachern (32:17): So don't freak out, but you will get better. It's like anything it's like learning a new language. It's like learning to snowboard. It's like learning to make a pie crust. When you first start, it's a disaster. Eventually you will get some sense of skill. Then you'll feel great about yourself. And then you can start looking at everyone and you're like, Oh
Pete Shorney (32:40): Yeah. Then you start, can pick going down the comparison spiral. But the point is with that though is you're not, as I say, it's your artwork, you're not wrong. You're just improving. Yeah. So you're, you're, you're not what would be wrong is if you want it to draw it and you didn't bother at all, that's the only one direction to take. Yeah. Well great. Where can people, where should people go if they want to learn more about you or see more of your artwork or, or do whatever you want them to do as it relates to you show it? Well, I've got my website, the moment, which is Pete Shawnee, art.com. Can you spell that? Yes. It's P E T E S H O R N for November, E y.com. And that has a shop link with prints available and also the aforementioned what the Butler saw and a vintage joker series and vintage Benito gift pack.
Pete Shorney (33:47): And you'll also be able to get me probably your best places. Instagram, if you want to see, are you basically post pretty much, if not everyday, every other day, a piece I've done a new piece of work. And if you have the patience and the time you can scroll right down to the beginnings of where I started life drawing in the last three years and watch the development and that's hopefully might be helpful. Pete, what is the Instagram handle that people can find you out? That's at peacock, Pete and peacock, Pete art on Twitter. Well, thank you so much for talking with me and responding to my email. Some stranger just emails you out of the blue, asked you to be on his podcast. So I appreciate you not thinking I'm a weirdo, as I say, I get all sorts of things. That's not the weirdest I sure. Okay. No, absolutely wonderful. And thank you so much for inviting me on the, on the podcast. Really enjoyed it. Three 11, talk to you. You're very welcome.