git @ Cat's Eye Technologies The-Dossier / 965de9a
Several more edits. Possibly nearing finished, I suppose. Chris Pressey 7 years ago
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5757
5858 If you go over such a drawing in, say, ink, after making it, you will "deaden" it.
5959
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.
6767
6868 But even this is a bit complicated. A line, on paper, usually indicates an outline,
6969 which itself is an abstraction of a "boundary" in reality where one thing
7474
7575 ### Drawing from a Reference
7676
77 ![Bob Study](http://static.catseye.tc/images/pictures/Bob%20Study%20-%20small.jpg)
7778 ![Profile of Young Woman, Traced](http://static.catseye.tc/images/pictures/Profile%20of%20Young%20Woman,%20Traced%20-%20small.png)
7879
7980 Often this is a photograph, although it could also be another drawing.
9798
9899 ### Drawing from the Imagination
99100
101 ![Fictional Landscape No. 1](http://static.catseye.tc/images/pictures/Fictional%20Landscape%20No.%201%20-%20small.jpg)
102
100103 William Blake was big on this. Piranesi and Tiepolo, too, and Leonardo too, for
101104 that matter, because _invenzione_ was big in the renaissance. More on that in a
102105 second.
122125 for imagination. I have to remember what a horse looks like, and what a horn looks
123126 like, but I have to imagine what a unicorn looks like.
124127
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
129133 don't exist because I've visited every planet in the galaxy and I've never seen
130134 one on any of them.
131135
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.
138145
139146 For this reason, some would call drawing from the imagination, especially drawing
140147 the human figure this way, the ultimate test of an artist. I don't know, but I agree
155162 paintings from photographs, and you can really tell with those, too.
156163 Photographs are far more unforgiving about lighting than the human eye is.
157164
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
158177 Books
159178 -----
160179
161180 I've read a number of "How to Draw X" books, of course, but they don't tend to
162181 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...)
164183
165184 It wasn't until I encountered these two books that I felt I had really found
166185 studies of drawing _per se_:
197216
198217 Indeed, the French translation of "still life" is _nature morte_, which
199218 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.