Several more edits. Possibly nearing finished, I suppose.
Chris Pressey
7 years ago
57 | 57 | |
58 | 58 | If you go over such a drawing in, say, ink, after making it, you will "deaden" it. |
59 | 59 | |
60 | Of course, you can make it in ink to begin with. Erasing is overrated. | |
61 | ||
62 | Drawings made this way are often _sketches_. I mean this word in its literal sense: | |
63 | it comes from an Italian word meaning "to spray", and means, roughly speaking, | |
64 | making more than one line, not totally accurately, and hoping the viewer's eye will | |
65 | "split the difference". It would be the opposite of _line drawing_, which is usually | |
66 | interpreted to mean that the lines are clear and are the "right" lines. | |
60 | Of course, you can make it in ink to begin with. Drawings made this way are often | |
61 | called _sketches_. I mean this word in a literal sense that it has in the context of | |
62 | drawing, where scholars think it came from the Italian word _schizzo_ meaning | |
63 | "to spray", and means, roughly speaking, making more than one line, not totally | |
64 | accurately, and hoping the viewer's eye will "split the difference". It would be | |
65 | the opposite of _line drawing_, which is usually interpreted to mean that the lines | |
66 | are clear and are the "right" lines. | |
67 | 67 | |
68 | 68 | But even this is a bit complicated. A line, on paper, usually indicates an outline, |
69 | 69 | which itself is an abstraction of a "boundary" in reality where one thing |
74 | 74 | |
75 | 75 | ### Drawing from a Reference |
76 | 76 | |
77 |  | |
77 | 78 |  |
78 | 79 | |
79 | 80 | Often this is a photograph, although it could also be another drawing. |
97 | 98 | |
98 | 99 | ### Drawing from the Imagination |
99 | 100 | |
101 |  | |
102 | ||
100 | 103 | William Blake was big on this. Piranesi and Tiepolo, too, and Leonardo too, for |
101 | 104 | that matter, because _invenzione_ was big in the renaissance. More on that in a |
102 | 105 | second. |
122 | 125 | for imagination. I have to remember what a horse looks like, and what a horn looks |
123 | 126 | like, but I have to imagine what a unicorn looks like. |
124 | 127 | |
125 | Unicorns! Don't get me started on unicorns. They're an aesthetics researchers | |
126 | favourite animal to fixate on. Because a drawing of a unicorn isn't a | |
127 | *representation* of a unicorn, you see, because they don't exist, you see, and | |
128 | you can't *represent* something that doesn't exist, you see, and I know they | |
128 | Unicorns! Don't get me started on unicorns. They're a philosophical aesthetician's | |
129 | [(Footnote 3)](#footnote-3) absolute favourite animal. Because a drawing of a | |
130 | unicorn isn't a *representation* of a unicorn, you see, because they don't exist, | |
131 | you see, and you can't *represent* something that doesn't exist, you see, and | |
132 | that is very important in the world of philosophical aesthetics. And I know they | |
129 | 133 | don't exist because I've visited every planet in the galaxy and I've never seen |
130 | 134 | one on any of them. |
131 | 135 | |
132 | The main drawback is, of course, that it's easy to get basic things wrong. By | |
133 | "basic things" I mean, the relative length of limbs of a figure, or the | |
134 | foreshortening, or sometimes even the number of digits on a hand, for goodness sake. | |
135 | And even if not wrong, for something complex and subtle like the human figure, it's | |
136 | almost inevitable that the drawer will miss some of the subtleties. The result is | |
137 | something that "looks made up". | |
136 | The main drawback of drawing from the imagination is, of course, that it's easy to | |
137 | get basic things wrong. By "basic things" I mean, the relative length of limbs of | |
138 | a figure, or the foreshortening, or sometimes even the number of digits on a hand, | |
139 | for goodness sake. And even if not wrong, for something complex and subtle like the | |
140 | human figure, it's almost inevitable that the drawer will miss some of the | |
141 | subtleties, like the way the muscles flex when a heavy object is being held versus | |
142 | when one's hand is empty. The result is a picture that looks "made up" somehow — | |
143 | it's usually hard to say exactly what is wrong because it is only that the visual | |
144 | cues are kind of "off", they don't add up. | |
138 | 145 | |
139 | 146 | For this reason, some would call drawing from the imagination, especially drawing |
140 | 147 | the human figure this way, the ultimate test of an artist. I don't know, but I agree |
155 | 162 | paintings from photographs, and you can really tell with those, too. |
156 | 163 | Photographs are far more unforgiving about lighting than the human eye is. |
157 | 164 | |
165 | A word on technique. A tradeoff that applies to all of these methods is that | |
166 | if you make a mark too slowly, it looks "fussy" — too deliberate, somehow. | |
167 | But the faster you make a mark, the more likely it will be inaccurate. The | |
168 | only way out of this tradeoff is to make accurate marks quickly. | |
169 | ||
170 | And, just the same as e.g. handling a bow and arrow, the only way to be both | |
171 | fast and accurate is to have a lifetime of practice. | |
172 | ||
173 | I remember reading something written by students of Mervyn Peake, and they | |
174 | were consistently impressed by his _confidence_ of line. That's probably | |
175 | exactly what I'm talking about here. | |
176 | ||
158 | 177 | Books |
159 | 178 | ----- |
160 | 179 | |
161 | 180 | I've read a number of "How to Draw X" books, of course, but they don't tend to |
162 | 181 | go into much depth. (Deconstruct the subject into a number of tin-cans. OK. |
163 | Try different media and grounds until you find what you like. OK...) | |
182 | Try different media and grounds until you find what you like. OK, OK...) | |
164 | 183 | |
165 | 184 | It wasn't until I encountered these two books that I felt I had really found |
166 | 185 | studies of drawing _per se_: |
197 | 216 | |
198 | 217 | Indeed, the French translation of "still life" is _nature morte_, which |
199 | 218 | literally translates to "dead nature". Go figure. |
219 | ||
220 | ##### Footnote 3 | |
221 | ||
222 | I have to say "philosophical aesthetician" because a just plain "aesthetician" | |
223 | is someone who does your nails, which is not what I mean, while an "aestheticist" | |
224 | is an adherent of Aestheticism, which is also not what I mean. Even though some | |
225 | of these people may in fact like unicorns a lot too. |