Drawing the Line
I've noticed something interesting over the last few days, that when I put in shading I spoil my drawings. Well that's not good. So I'm drawing the line, literally, I'm banning myself from tone for while, and just working with line in all my drawings until I think the line has got better.
It seems like I'm gradually stepping backwards, getting back to the basics of what I do bit by bit so that I can find my level and move forwards from there. First I started last November by painting, then I realised I had to learn to draw first, so I started drawing. After three months of drawing, I got seized by an impulse and started painting again, with the peeling onion. Even though I hadn't painted for a while, my paintings were better from then on than they had been, I think anyway. Direct benefit from retreating back to drawing. Now I've decided that I need to take one more step backwards, drop tone, and go back to drawing only with line.
This has come about because of a few drawings of people I've done over the last few days, some portrait drawings. It's also a result of my experience of the first few Bargue drawings.
I'll try to explain with the drawings:
First I drew my good mate Paddy when he came to visit for a couple of days. Here he is, chatting with Michelle at the kitchen table. Passing resemblance at best, but I like the drawing anyway.
That seemed to start me off and I did four more people drawings over the next few days.
The next day I drew Michelle. In this drawing I first noticed that the more shading I added, the more I was spoiling the drawing. In the end I rubbed most of it out, and took it back to being mainly a line drawing. I would have ruined this drawing if I'd kept going, as it was, leaving it when I did made for a much nicer drawing.
It's not a great likeness, but it manages to catch something about Michelle, with almost no modelling of form with tone. It reminds me of a thought I had when I was copying the van Dyck drawing, that he'd left much of the face as blank paper, but the form lived anyway, and it created a feeling of light. There is some tone on the face in that drawing, true, but all deep shadow, there's no mid tones really. The form of the face on the right side, in the light, still lives though, and there's a strong impression of light on the face.
Although to be fair I did fill in her eyes, that's the only tone on the picture, apart from that it's all line.
This drawing felt almost effortless to do compared to the self portrait, and took me less than a quarter of the time. It's a better likeness and it's a nicer drawing. That made me think. This drawing and the self portrait were done within two days of each other, one failed and one didn't. One was all line, one wasn't. So I got to thinking about how I'd been struggling with the tones on these drawings over the last few days. I was thinking about how Bargue can show form with line only, no shading at all, and about Ingres' drawings, again all line, but what finely controlled line. I've also noticed that the bargue copies are improving my line, and that helps me in painting too.
Out of a need to improve my line, and a realisation that it's the shading that spoils my drawings, grew the decision to drop shading and just work on line for a while. So all the drawings for the remainder of my series of features, the hands, eyes, noses and mouths will be drawn with line only. The hand drawings were going that way anyway. Also any portrait drawings will be line, and all the cafe drawings. The only drawings which have any tone in them will be the Bargue copies, because that would be getting too pedantic. Also, if the Bargue drawings do for my handling of tone what I'm beginning to feel them doing for my line, when I do start to draw with tone again I should have a clearer idea of what I'm going for.
Posted 18th April 2006
