Covide has created the Virtual Resurrection to Draw Life

It was Alida Pepper facing depression. Stuck in his San Francisco apartment, he was about to unravel all the plans he had made. For months, Pepper, a lifelong drawing model, worked more hours to save for the next operation and set aside extra money to take time to recover. Now, a forced break from work threatened to dismantle everything. He was not alone, of course. This was March 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, and all fighting. But Pepper had a very special connection: how to continue in a profession dependent on seeing and drawing up close.

In the second week of the blockade he found something that felt like a solution. Pepper sketched the same artist, model Aaron Bogan, while experimenting with modeling on Instagram Live. Inspired, he tested different software with his community — Zoom, Blue Jeans, Instagram — to see if it was possible for Bogan to work the way he did. It seems that drawing a virtual life could be the solution Pepper needed.

The standard template for drawing life hasn’t changed much in centuries: a bustling studio, while posing as a model on stage, while a circle of artists works in cabinets. But with the Covid-19 blockade in place, the studios were left empty and the models stayed home, evaporating their employment opportunities. Then everything changed. Suddenly, the drawing of life was revived; fulfilling video chat networks just like the studios of yesteryear. Artists began making sketches from home, inspired by models that were presented directly on computer screens. The methods used were not entirely new — video conferencing existed before the pandemic, after all — but the changes they drew in life were far more than anyone expected. “Drawing life online was a game changer,” says Diane Olivier, who taught drawing in life at City College in San Francisco from 1991 to 2020. He allowed students to continue learning and drawing and continued to use models.

Drawing virtual life has its challenges. Connectivity and screen size may be an issue. The camera cannot reproduce all the tones and details that it can see with the naked eye. And it’s undeniable that artists look at a two-dimensional image, not a person of flesh. But as artists and models became more characteristic of their flaws, they found ways to allow things that virtual environments couldn’t do before. Life drawing groups were formed everywhere. People who hadn’t practiced before had started picking up pencils. People who were never modeled or able were found a place on a new pedestal.

The biggest obstacle did he throw away that drawing of virtual life? Access. Suddenly, people who didn’t live near the studios or who had disabilities that made it difficult to get out of the house drew an internet connection from anywhere. “Models can now choose their own setting,” says Isobel Cameron, who co-leads the UK group Fat Life Drawing with her sister Emily. “He liked to be in the water and we had a model posing in a bathtub with a camera on his head. And another one posing in the woods.”