Drawing through a shower curtain and what happened next

 Zoom life drawing continues.  I have been part of Mick Kirkbride's Insight Art zoom life drawing since it started.  It is absolutely brilliant! Today Mick hung a shower curtain so we could barely see the model.  Mick is an advocate of struggling with the materials.  What he didn't know was that my studio was bright today and it was even harder for me to make out the model (behind an opaque/translucent curtain), projected onto the wall.  

After I drew the three sketches behind the curtain, I thought how the ambiguity and blockiness of the figures recalled Bonnard. I took out a book of Bonnard paintings and opened to a page that had similar colours to what I was looking at and drew the model before me.

16 x 16cm (about an hour) pastel on paper prepared with tinted pastel ground

Bonnard - Nude with Chair

10 minute sketch through a translucent/opaque shower curtain. 

10 minute sketch through a translucent/opaque shower curtain. 

10 minute sketch through a translucent/opaque shower curtain. 

How do I use life drawings?

The barrier of reproducing something REAL from a brief life-drawing experience has meant that I have avoided using my life drawing in my painting and printmaking work, except to get the gesture of a figure to use in a monotype.  Patrick thinks this is untapped territory. I think I am sensitive about being branded 'nostalgic' or 'romantic' too, so hundreds of sketches languish in folders and sketchbooks.  
But this morning I decided to try to put all that aside and to do something finished with a life drawing.  
I can still remember Keith Boyle, one of my painting teachers, and our discussion about my love of Bonnard.  He used the word 'decorative'. I suppose Mattise, Modigliani, Gaugin they might be branded with that same word.