Artist looks for former 'models'


An artist is looking to reunite drawings of school children he made about three decades ago with the adults those pupils have become.

Francis Boag, 60, is nowadays known for his landscape and still life work, but while he was teaching he would often make sketches of his pupils.
He used the youngsters at St John's in Dundee and Monifieth High School as models in the late 1970s and early 80s.
He now wants to give the drawings to those who feature in them.
The idea came about after a former pupil, who now lives in Canada, got in touch about buying one of his more modern works.
'A memento'
Mr Boag, who lives in the outskirts of Stonehaven, recognised her name and remembered that he had drawn her while she was a teenager.
He then decided that she, and the others he drew, could have their sketches.
Mr Boag explained: "I was an art teacher at St John's, it was my first teaching post pretty well. I wasn't long out of college and I had ambitions to be a painter even though I was a teacher.
" I had my easel and paints set up in my art room, but I think it was the fourth year girls used to use it as a social area at lunchtime because there'd been a fire in the school and there wasn't any social areas.
" The dining room had burnt down and they would have their sandwiches and so on and I'd be working away and I would just draw some of them occasionally and the collection developed."
He made the drawings at St John's between about 1977 and 1980 before he moved to Monifieth, where he drew pupils until about 1983.
" Maybe I imposed a little bit by using them as free models really," he said.
" I'm not sure there was any, 'Oh whoopee, Mr Boag's drawing me again,' it was just a, 'Oh, I've got to sit here for another 20 minutes.'
" I was serious about trying to be an artist and they were very helpful."
He does remember most of the girls he drew at St John's and he also wrote their name on the sketches.
He has about 20 drawings of the pupils.
" They're all signed so they'll have a memento, a reminder of themselves as a teenager because they'll all be about 40 odd now I imagine and it'll be strange seeing them again," he said.
Mr Boag has an exhibition of his more modern work at the Queen's Gallery in Dundee from 28 February.
The sketches of the pupils will be kept at the gallery for the models to collect.