Join local artists, models for a tipsy doodle

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This article was published 20/10/2011 (5468 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Driving is a no-no, but friends do let friends drink and draw.

And if they’re Holly Halftone and Meg Bergeron, they even provide live models — just not the silent and static kind you may remember from art class.

The Winnipeg duo are the brains behind Drawn and Plastered, a monthly, themed art night where you can raise a pint and a pencil and then party and dance the night away with other creative types.

Think life-drawing session meets burlesque cabaret.

And if sketching isn’t your strong suit, feel free to photograph the models, write a poem about them, or maybe bring along some Sculpey clay and immortalize them in 3-D.

No specific skills are necessary to participate. Drawn and Plastered “exists to inspire,” according to its creators.

“It’s basically an all-genre art and creativity forum,” says Halftone, 22, herself an artist and photographer. “We welcome anything that anyone considers their art.”

The next event, the fourth since D&P launched in July, takes place Saturday, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. at Pop Soda’s Coffee House & Gallery (625 Portage Ave.). Admission is $5 at the door. The Halloween-friendly theme is Pet Sematary and participants are invited to come in costume and to share ghost stories and spooky works of original fiction at the open mike.

D&P was inspired by Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-art School, an alternative-drawing movement started in a dive bar in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2005 by art-school dropout Molly Crabapple. The goal, according to the website, was to bring artists of all abilities together to “draw glamorous underground performers in an atmosphere of boozy conviviality.” The “drink and draw” movement has since spread to more than 100 cities around the world.

It takes figure drawing out of its usual isolated, sterile environment and puts it in a fun and stimulating social setting with music and, of course, the libations blatantly hinted at in the name.

“Artists get tired of just sitting in a studio and drawing a nude model,” says Bergeron, “so instead they can come to a bar where there are people who want to model.” Not in the nude, but in some very interesting ensembles. (The theme of the inaugural event was Victorian Asylum.)

Bergeron, 26, and Halftone recruit the models and also do all the wardrobe, hair and makeup themselves. Unlike traditional life-art models, however, these ones have personas, and when they’re not posing, they’ll be mingling among the crowd.

The idea is to showcase local talent, artists and models alike, says Bergeron. “We really want to build a community around this — a group of friends where everyone can get together and collaborate so that art doesn’t have to be such a solitary activity.”

For those who claim they don’t have an artistic bone in their body, there will also be some local performers — musicians, magicians, hoopers, etc. — popping in occasionally to help the models entertain.

For more information, check the web at www.drawnandplastered.com

carolin.vesely@freepress.mb.ca