William Yu describes drawing from a live model as less about creating a finished image than catching something before it disappears. As the model shifts, relaxes, settles their weight, a pose might emerge that, within a minute, is gone again.
That limited window is exactly what appeals to him. Yu thinks of live model drawings as an artist’s version of a first draft. There is no time to overthink your work or spend more and more time polishing.
“The time limit of a live pose does not allow for planning, revision, or judgment,” he says. “Much like a meditative process, it requires the artist to be completely present.”
That presence gives his figure drawings their incredible energy. William usually begins with a broad gesture, establishing the movement of the body before anything else. From there, the rest of the drawing responds to that first mark, evolving almost as if it were alive. With charcoal, pastel, Conté pencil, and watercolor crayon, William uses so many different tools because they allow him to work quickly and decisively.
For Yu, the drawing succeeds when it preserves that sense of motion even after the model has gone still. His interest in fine art goes back much further than his formal art training. William was born in Hong Kong in 1964 and moved to Boston with his parents when he was four. As the first-born son in an immigrant Chinese family, he followed a practical academic path and eventually earned a degree in Computer Engineering from Boston University. Art, however, kept finding its way back in. During his senior year, William enrolled in an art class for non-majors. One class became several, and he continued studying painting and drawing at Boston University as a part-time student. The school’s traditional emphasis on working from a live model reconnected him with something he had loved much earlier: the expressive human figures of comic books, Saturday morning cartoons, and the Frank Frazetta posters that once covered his bedroom walls.
It’s the type of connection that drew William back into art. After moving to Boulder, Yu continued drawing regularly while building a completely different professional life as a network engineer. The contrast between those two worlds is part of what makes his practice interesting. William has now called Boulder home for more than 26 years, and much of his work comes from simply paying attention to the life happening around him. On weekends, he can often be found sketching quietly in coffee shops, drawing the people and scenes nearby before anyone notices what he is doing.
More recently, he has returned to oil painting and has taken that observational practice outdoors. Pearl Street Mall and the Boulder Farmers Market have become places to work as much as places to visit.
Rather than relying heavily on photographs, Yu prefers direct observation whenever possible. Painting and sketching directly from life. The unpredictability is part of it. People move. Light changes. Streets refuse to hold still. But that’s a positive for William, not a negative. His subjects can range widely, but the impulse behind them remains similar. Whether he is drawing a figure, painting an alleyway, or responding to a landscape, William is trying to capture what he describes as the “ineffable and fleeting moment of life.”
Yu has participated in Boulder’s Open Studios tours since 2018, and his work has been exhibited in Boulder, Longmont, and Golden. Yet his approach remains refreshingly process-driven.
He is less interested in forcing every drawing toward a perfect conclusion than in staying alert to what happens while making it.
That may be why his live drawings feel so revealing.
They show hesitation alongside confidence. They leave the evidence of speed, instinct, and decision visible on the page. Instead of disguising the artist’s hand, William lets us see it thinking in real time. And sometimes, that first response to a moment says more than a finished image ever could.
303-817-5163 | william@yu3studios.com yu3studios.com @yu3studios
4949 Pearl St. -Unit K Boulder, CO 80301
