Holding the Line
It's been an interesting week.
After deciding to draw only with line, I've been doing some more of the features series and self portraits. They've been taking some time to do and are mostly slightly strange in one way or another. The official version is that the drawings have to get worse before they can get better. The unnofficial version is that I'm a bit bemused by them.
A welcome and much needed release has come from a copy of a Sargent portrait drawing and my first trip to the cafe for two weeks.
Regardless, one very good thing is coming out of this line only idea, I'm seeing shapes and judging the relationships between them better, which means better laid out drawings. I think it's because drawing only with line is a further abstraction than drawing already is, giving me less to deal with and helping me to break down the shapes. I'm trying to draw only the lines I can see, so if a contour goes into a shadow and disappears, I don't draw it. I've come accross the saying many times that drawing is about what you take out. By taking out tone I'll hopefully find it easier to decide which lines to take out. It's still about seeing, but what goes down on the paper is more of a process of selection.
Although the drawings I've done this week are odd, I can feel something going on under the surface, some progress which isn't really showing yet. I hope. Today's cafe sketches came out alright. I'd say today it was noticably easier to see shapes and get the drawings somewhere right. I think that might be because of my crazy line drawings.
First line drawing of an eye. I remember this feeling very alien to draw. It's odd, because I always use line in drawings, doesn't everybody, but when I could use only line I seemed to go a bit haywire. As a drawing, this bears little resemblance to my left eye. I think I was finding my feet with this line business. I was conscious of looking more closely though. As badly drawn as they are, it's interesting that I've put my eyelashes in.
The second eye came out better. I calmed down a bit on this one and drew more carefuly. It looks almost like the Bargue eyes, there's not much mistaking his influence now. What struck me about this when I'd done it is that this eye had more three dimensional form than any other eye I've drawn. I had what I thought was a minor epiphany. It's all about the line. If I can get my line drawing strong, showing form, then everything else will naturally follow.
Since drawing just with line I've started to see details I hadn't seen before. Whilst drawng this eye I noticed a bit of skin like a tiny sideways eyelid just in the corner of my eye. It seems very odd to me that I've never seen that before.
I was starting to think about doing a self portrait like this. If it worked nice for eyes, maybe the same thing would happen if I drew my whole head like this. I decided it would be best to do some noses or something first.
Noses. Surprisingly difficult to draw convincingly I find. Only drawing the lines I could see here meant no continuous line down the nose. Usually I think my brain would have insisted that there was one and made me draw it. Interesting though. There's only a few lines here, but this is as good as any of my other noses, looks as physical. This was one of four done the same way, my nose in line only.
Ok, time for the self portrait. What an odd drawing. I must admit I was tempted to put fangs on this and make it into a Nosferatu the next day. Still, despite the lumpen and distorted nature of the drawing, some of the details are observed a bit better, they just don't fit together very well. I'm starting to think that this line thing is definitely a good idea. I'm not sure why I did it with this heavy, consistent line. All these drawings have this line, which is not what I intended at all. I think it may be because I was concentrating on where the line so much I forgot to draw naturally as I usually would.
After a couple more abortive attempts I did this one. I took my time with this one, concentrating on trying to place things right. I think my slightly strained expression and rigid stance is due to the fact that this drawing took eight hours, standing at the easel. I had a pretty bad back by the time I'd finished it. I probably would have gone on longer, but I got to a point where I was correcting lines, then correcting them back again to where they were before. Not a nice drawing, but a very good exercise.
Although these drawings do seem to have gone a bit haywire, I have a feeling I'm learning something from them. I guess this heavy line has come from the Bargue plates, but it seems to be abating.
To balance these drawings I did a copy of a Sargent portrait drawing of his friend Gabriel Faure. I chose this drawing because it has nice quality of line. It was interesting also to copy a drawing so different from the Bargue plates, a lot of this drawing is comparatively loose, without the obsessive neatness of the classical cast drawings. But the main thing that struck me as I drew it is how light a lot of it is.
Sargent has reserved his darkest line for accents, the eye, the ear and the bottom of the nose. The rest of the line is very light and simple, mostly done in one go and left from what I can see. The exception is the back of the head where he's moved it out a couple of centimetres.
This drawing is a good example of taking out. Sargent has only really drawn the profile and the main features, everything else is just roughed in. He's only worked in any real detail around the eye, where he's used tiny, fine lines to show the corner of the eye. But the drawing lives, and the small amount of loose tone he's added is enough to create a feeling of light on Faure's face. Much to learn from this drawing. A benefit of copying it is that I now have it in my head, I know every detail of it. I can think about how it was drawn without needing to look at it.
This week's cafe sketching trip was a good one, I enjoyed myself and some of the drawings came out ok. This one of the old guy I especially like. It was a welcome release from my recent long-winded, rigorous eye training drawings and provided a much needed breath of fresh air.
It was also the first trip for two weeks, so I was itching to get out and draw. There's been a slightly heated discussion recently on a painter's forum I visit about working from photos, and how working from life, though preferable, can be difficult due to time constraints, money for models etc. I was thinking about that as I was sitting drawing my unruly but free models, making small connections from me to the life of the people I drew by catching a moment from it in my sketchpad, and from them to me through the drawing. I can't see why anyone wouldn't want to do this, it's fun and it's life affirming at the same time, never mind how the drawings come out.
I've finally got the first four drawings from plate three of the Bargue drawings done. It's taken a long time to get to this point and there's still six to go on this plate. It's hard work, with all the correcting, you have to be strict with yourself, but its almost meditative at the same time. And if you ask me, the value for eye training is second to none.
Taking this further step back, dropping tone and working only in line, has helped I think. I seem to be seeing a bit better. These drawings are taking me quite a long time, but that's a good thing, I'm slowing down to my own seeing pace, finding my level. I can't say that concentrating on line has produced any nice drawings yet, apart from maybe a couple of yesterday's cafe sketches, but I think it will before too long.
23rd April 2006
