How many times have you heard this?
I know I’ve come across it a few times, it’s a common criticism of what we might broadly call representational work that slavishly copying what you see isn’t art. An either/or dichotomy is generally assumed between feeling and accuracy.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the how big the gap is between what we see and what ends up on our paper, canvas, or whatever support we happen to be working on.The point is, that gap is always there. Sometimes it might be a big gap and sometimes a small one, but I think that it’s somewhere in that gap that the personality behind the drawing or painting sneaks in and makes itself felt, even in the most tightly controlled, visually faithful work.
So that’s what I’m going to be writing about today, and I’m going to do it by referencing a couple of practice self portrait drawingsI’ve done fairly recently. I’m going to leave aside the “that’s not art” part. I mean really, who is qualified to decide that? All of us ornone of us, but we’ll reach our own conclusions. It’s the “copying what you see” part that really interests me, and is what I’m going tobe talking about in reference to my self portrait drawings.
Both of these drawings were done sight size, a technique which in particular seems to come in for a healthy amount of vilification, largely I think from people who equate the sight size technique with obsessive accuracy and “copying what you see”.
A quick scan around the web this morning turned up these little gems, which I think are fairly typical and relevant:
(A comment on a blog.)
(An online review of “The Art Spirit” by Robert Henri.)
(An excerpt from a blog post)
(Not from the web this one, I overheard a teacher loudly pronounce this piece of particularly ill-considered wisdom to her class of young children in a room of impressionist paintings in the National Gallery, London. Ironic, really, since impressionism was all about the visual impression and not at all about feeling.)
To my mind, this way of thinking is inherited – a hangover, if you like – from the Romantic movement which supplanted Classicism some time in the late 1700s and has (it could be argued) been influencing Western thinking about art ever since.
It’s not “Just” copying. In fact, it’s not “copying” at all.
I certainly wouldn’t disagree with the idea that representational drawing and painting can be (and perhaps even should be) concerned with other things in addition to the visual impression, and perhaps more so. But what does make me a little uncomfortable are the pejorative connotations that the phrase “just copying what you see” carries with it. Note the “just” part of that phrase, as if drawing accurately were a trivial undertaking. Pulling off realistic representational work would be easy if that was case, but if my experience is anything to go by, it really, really isn’t!
I should be clear though: I’m not arguing the opposite view that copying what you see is art. What bothers me is that what is often dismissed as “copying what you see” is anything but copying. Of course representational work begins with the visual impression. But something happens when that impression is translated onto a two dimensional plane by a thinking, feeling human being. Choices are made; some conscious, some not.
Because of this, making a drawing of something perceived in the real world is almost never copying. I’m fond of saying that drawing is thinking.You might as easily say that drawing is feeling, and I don’t personally see any contradiction between those two assertions. It’s both. Mind science is increasingly finding intimate connections between emotion and rationality, to the extent that some (Alexander Damasio for example) will contend that the two are inextricably linked. Rationality can’t exist without emotion. If you want to read up a bit more about that, I’d recommendDescartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Anyway, whether we call it thinking, feeling, or a bit of both, representational drawing is abstraction by its very nature since the drawing is abstracted and selected from the raw visual information. A drawing is a mental construct made physical. It’s not copying. It really isn’t.
Enough chit chat, show me some pictures!
OK, I will.
This post is really about something that struck me whilst working on a couple of drawings recently, and the best way to illustrate it is todo my usual step-by-step demonstration approach. Along the way, I hope I’m going to be able to show how the kind of drawing I’m trying to do here most emphatically isn’t slavish copying. Complete fidelity to the visual impression wasn’t my goal in either of the two drawingsI’m posting today, which is probably just as well since going on the evidence I’m obviously not skilled enough to achieve that in any case 🙂
Theory Into Practice
A little while ago I did a few copies of Sargent portrait drawings, in order to learn something about the way he approached them. It struck me how economical he could be with his values and modelling, yet still create a convincing impression of three dimensional form.
I began to look at Bargue drawings in relation to the Sargent drawing, looking for differences and similarities in the approach. Having copied a few Bargue drawings, I have some idea of how Bargue approached the conceptualisation of form in them. There is often no detail at all in the lights and very little in the darks, perhaps a whisper of a suggestion of reflected light. Most of the subtleties of the modelling, the fine gradations of tone, are expressed in the half-tone areas.
From Bargue to Life
One thing that’s always struck me about the Bargue drawings is that although they are quite stylised and certainly aren’t examples of faithful copying of the visual impression, they still have a forceful impression of three dimensions and a great sense of physicality of the form. I thought it might be an interesting idea to draw my own head using Bargue’s way of conceptualising light and shadow in mind.
Which brings me nicely round, finally, to what I sat down to write about today in the first place.
Self portrait drawing #1
Apart from the aforementioned approach to simplified darks and lights and finely modelled half-tones, two other things about Bargue drawings stand out for me:
Edges, where light meets light, are shown by lines. This is most obvious where a light plane of a head, for example, butts up against a light background. In the real world we see edges between forms as differences in value. An outline like this is an abstraction, probably related to the tactile notion of the felt boundary of a form. An outline is not what we see, it’s an abstraction, an idea.
The paper, despite being a high mid value, not white, is taken as the lightest light. This makes the value range of the drawings quite narrow and means that no highlights are included at all. This is a simplification of value, an abstraction of it and therefore not exactly what we see.
This approach to conceptualising a drawing can be seen pretty clearly in this Bargue copy. Edges of forms are shown by lines. There’s no modelling in the lights or the shadows. The edges of shadows are carefully handled, and there is some fairly economical handling of half tones, but there are large areas with no modelling at all. It’s a highly conceptual approach to drawing, a translation and an abstraction. But the form lives.
Setting up the drawing and sight size
Both of the drawings I’m posting today were begun in exactly the same way, with close similarities to the approach used on the Bargue copy. Some time ago I discovered that if you draw around your head on the surface of a mirror, your head, as it is projected onto the surface of the mirror, will always be exactly half the actual size of your real head no matter what distance you are from the mirror.
That makes it possible to draw your own head sight size. As you can see from the picture below, I’ve got a permanent set up for this now with a mirror hung on the wall and a drawing board screwed to the wall next to it. By transposing the reflection of my head across to the paper, I will get a drawing exactly half the size of my head.
I’m standing a fair way back from the mirror. That distance is effectively doubled anyway because the distance between me and the mirror is reflected in the mirror itself. If I’m five feet back from the mirror, I’m drawing myself as if I was ten feet away. This rather usefully makes your studio twice the size it really is.
I’ve already started the drawing in the picture above. I’ve begun by drawing a vertical line down the middle of my paper. I also have a corresponding length of cotton taped vertically to the mirror, which I use to judge distances from. Essentially, what I have here is not so very different than the set-up I use for sight size flat copies, which you can see in this post of a portrait drawing and this one of the Bargue Drawing copy, described in a bit more depth.
After a bit of measuring and drawing out, I’ve got a basic and reasonably accurate scaffolding (I hope) of my head laid in:
I think this is a good time to revisit one of the quotes I started this post with:
I can’t get inside the head of the person who wrote that, but I hope I’m not doing them too much of a disservice by making some assumptions about what they meant.
Sight size is just tracing
Firstly, there’s a (mis)conception that all you do when you’re laying out a drawing this way is tracing an exact outline of the subject.
That’s not what I’m trying to do here. I do want the shapes and proportions to be fairly accurate, but I’m trying to build a three dimensional armature of the main planes of my head. I think you can see that particularly around the brow and the nose, and the line I’ve drawn following what would be the profile down the centre of my head. I’m trying to figure out what the main forms are in simplified shapes. I’m trying to abstract them from the visual information I have before me.
I’m also looking for the edge of the main shadow that’s running down my forehead and down my face, because that helps to define the form and I know it’s going to be an important part of the drawing.
The point here is that I’m thinking and selecting as I start to lay in the drawing, not just copying.
Accuracy takes out the feeling
This is perhaps the most common criticism of representational work that attempts a reasonable degree of accuracy. I must come clean, I’m much more inclined to agree that there’s something in this. I could certainly see how an overriding obsession with accuracy might prevent you from making artistic decisions about the marks you make. But building an accurate scaffolding for the drawing needn’t necessarily stop you feeling I don’t think. It’s a question of how you approach it, surely.
Bargue’s drawings draw heavily on the Classical tradition, in which subtle changes to the drawing, to proportions and shapes, simplifying and beautifying line, are intended to create a more pleasing result. You might not like the classical approach, but please don’t labour under the misconception that it’s about copying. If it’s about anything, it’s about idealising. And that means changing the raw material of the visual perception so that it conforms more closely to the classical ideal of beauty, and beauty, surely, is something we feel.
Of course, you’d have a lot of work to do to make my head appear beautiful but I might conceivably look less of a common oik than I do in real life if my ignobly proportioned head was forcefully squeezed through the Classical ideal. I should try that one day. Maybe I’d come out looking like Apollo (but with less hair).
Building up the drawing
I’ve described my process for these drawings in more detail in the posts linked above, and I’m sure I’m already trying your patience with the length of this post, so I won’t go over it again. Let’s just whiz through the steps without labouring the process too much.
Establishing the main shadow shape
Here I’ve pretty much just filled in the shadow shape with a flat, even tone of something like the darkest value I can get with my willow charcoal. I won’t be doing a lot more with the shadow than this since Bargue leaves his main shadow areas pretty flat, apart from a hint of reflected light here and there.
I’m trying to at least follow his conceptual approach, albeit with rather less artistic accomplishment.
Refining the edges of the shadow block
Leaving the shadow tone and the light area untouched, I’m just looking at where the shadow moves into the light and trying to define the edges better.
The quality of the edge of a shadow, whether it’s hard or soft, can help to show whether the plane is moving gradually away from the light in a soft curve (soft edge) or sharply away (hard edge). Three dimensional form is already starting to appear because of this.
Introducing half-tones
Now I’m starting on the meat of the drawing really, the half tones. I still haven’t done anything with the lights, and have only introduced a suggestion of reflected light in the main shadow area.
It’s amazing to me how this restrained suggestion of reflected light in the shadow helps to suggest the roundness of the form there.
Finishing off
With the drawing finished, I think this is an interesting first attempt at using the method of organizing light and shadow from the Bargue drawing course on a live head. Some areas don’t quite read right though. Specifically, the forehead seems to bulge in the half-tone area to me, and doesn’t flow naturally into the shadow. There must be something wrong there in the transition from light area to half tone to shadow. I suspect it’s too abrupt.
Perhaps some cast drawing using this approach might help to develop facility with half-tones further. I do think the key to getting a drawing of this type to work lies in the handling of the half-tones more than anything else, so that would be the area to concentrate on.
Self Portrait drawing #2
It should be mentioned before I go any further that I spent a lot longer on this drawing than the first one, trying to get the shapes and proportions more accurate. With this drawing I was looking for a more convincing translation of the tonal visual impression with more modulation of values in the lights, and the introduction of a background value. The shadow planes and half tones, however, are treated very similarly to the first drawing.
Although this approach is perhaps closer to what I saw than the first drawing, the initial stages were identical to the ‘Bargue’ approach taken above. The main difference is that it’s tonally more complete and more detailed in the light areas of the head. Edges between forms are shown by value differences instead of lines. In fact, there are no lines in this picture, a trademark of what might be called ‘optical effect’ drawing.
The addition of more modulation does result in a more convincing three dimensional effect in the lights I think. But some of the strength of simplification of the Bargue approach is lost. There is less opportunity for interpretation and significantly less flexibility for design and expression, it seems to me.
What’s worth pointing out here though is that the highlights down the forehead, on the end of the nose and down the cheek on the left of the drawing are much lower in value that they were in the subject (me). That meant that I had to drop the value of the light areas somewhat in order to have the highlights stand out. Which meant, of course, that I had to drop the value range of the half-tones in turn in order to differentiate them from the light areas.
If that seems overly technical, I’m pointing it out in order to underline the fact that I had to manipulate the values I saw in order to get a drawing in which the values worked against each other. I wasn’t copying (would that I could) I was being forced to translate the values.
Is there a point to all this?
I hope so, yes.
I do agree that art can be about feelings and making people think. My favourite paintings are my favourites in large part due to the emotional reaction they illicit in me.
But that said, I think that what’s often dismissed as mere slavish copying is actually something very different. I hope that I’ve at least partly managed to explain why I think that’s the case with this post.
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The title of your post really got my heckles up!
I think that Slavish is a horrible word, when in fact some artists are actually Striving, not slaving. I wonder if those who say Just Copying are the ones who have not managed to achieve a reasonable degree of representational drawing, nor felt the benefit of it. I overheard a young school teacher in The Dulwich Picture Gallery, when a young boy asked for a rubber as they were about to copy a painting, loudly proclaim that Real Artists didn’t use rubbers. Why couldn’t she just say she’d forgotten to bring them…?!
Hi Julie.
>artists are actually Striving, not slaving
Oh well put, I like that.
I think it’s often the case that people denigrate what they can’t achieve themselves, you’re tight. A most insightful comment.
>Real Artists didn’t use rubbers
That’s so wrong I just don’t know where to start!
Hilarious typo Julie, sorry, I meant to say “You’re right” not “You’re tight”.
It’s been a long day…
Hi Paul,
Such a timely post as I was thinking about this very topic yesterday. I have nothing but comments of high regard for your self-portrait.
What you said about not being fully satisfied with the forehead area piqued my curiosity, so I flipped through my Dover Art Library Sargent Portrait Drawings book to see how he would have done it.
Remember Arno from your previous posts? https://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/feeling-the-form If you compare the frontal skull bone of Arno to the Sargent drawing of William Sturgis Bigelow at the JSS site http://www.jssgallery.org/paintings/mugs/william_sturgis_bigelow.htm you can just barely see a line drawn along the terminator of the forehead to indicate there is a sharper plane change from the frontal bone to the top of the skull. Sargent does seem to have taken the curve of the terminator and every so slightly straightened it, breaking the curve into the top and frontal two planes,as well. At least, that’s how I’m seeing it. Without that sharpness indicated, I think William’s head would have appeared more rounded as well.
And that is at least one valid reason I can think of to answer why copying the drawings of other artists is beneficial to me. So that we may learn from the masters before us how they resolved such real-life optical challenges efficiently and in a “thinking” manner.
Wonderful and very informative self-portrait demo. I admire your work so much and learned something new today, thanks!
I would like to comment on this dilemma about art and copying what you see. I think that art starts before you even put a pencil on the canvas or paper,there are many good draftsman and painters, yes they can represent almost anything and that is to be admirer, but at the end the Technic is only for the ones who really understand the craftsmanship ,for the rest of the people a paintings says something to them or not. In music we have it very clear. for example in a symphonic , the musicians play their instruments very well, but the one that compose the melody , he or she is the real artist.The artist has a vision,and also has the Technic to bring it to a state of perfect communication with the audience, so make people like it and feel it, in other words what the artist does is graceful and likable.I hope I made myself understood, sorry about my English, by the way I love the drawings you did.
Thank you for posting this Paul. It saved me!
Hi Paul – I loved your typo, I’m SO tight!!! (which doesn’t mean UP tight, ok..!) I forgot to say how much I liked your drawing. I wrote about Love on my own blog yesterday, similar to your own view point, I think. Its a long-winded title –
http://www.juliedouglasdrawingpaintinglearning.blogspot.com
Paul, nice to read your post. I always get my back up when confronted with the “accuracy takes out the feeling,” as well as the “if I learn to draw representationally, it will ruin my style.” I personally like my cats to look like cats and my people to look like people.
But there is a difference between just drafting what you see and designing a picture.Blogger Stapelton Kearns always says, “you cannot observe design into a painting”. He means, you have to design the painting around what you are observing, and not be slavish to the observed thing. I think that leaves a lot of room for creativity AND accuracy.
Hi Colleen, thanks for popping in and commenting, and thanks for your kind words on the drawings.
>Remember Arno from your previous posts?
Ah, how could I forget him? He’s landfill now but his memory lingers on 🙂
That’s a really interesting comparison with the Sargent drawing. particularly so for me since I’ve copied that very drawing and so know it well. The forehead where it turns into the shadow on teh side of the head is also very sharp, undoubtedly more so than he will have seen it.
In fact, I remember wondering about that when I copied that drawing – but that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about in this ost – the gap bwtween the visual impression and what ends up on the paper. Excellent example, thanks.
Do you think the sharpness of the form turning i Sarget’s drwing helps the drawing overall? Do you think it should be more rounded?
>we may learn from the masters before us how they resolved such real-life optical challenges efficiently and in a “thinking” manner.
Absolutely, couldn’t agree more. That’s why I copy.
Hi Jesus, nice to hear from you again.
>I think that art starts before you even put a pencil on the canvas or paper
I was re-reading Oil Painting Techniques and Materials by Harold Speed today and this passage jumped out at me:
“There is at the start of every work of art a nebulous-let us say “idea” for want of a better word, in the mind of the artist. And it is the clothing of this nucleus with the appropriate form, tone and colour, the giving it expression, that is the business of the artist. Technical training is necessarily concerned with solely with developing the means by which this can be done in the most complete manner.”
Going on that, I think speed would agree with you. To a large extent I do too. Have you read the book?
What I’m less comfortable with is the distinction between craft and art. I’m not so sure that you can draw a distinct line between them, and even less sure about who gets to draw it.
Taking your example of the musician and the composer, doesn’t the musician interpret the raw material of the composition, and might that be not be done with more or less feeling, so that the music itself communicates more completely to the listener? And is the musician then not an artist too, by your definition?
Broadly speaking though, I do agree with what you say. And you’ve made yourself understood with great clarity. Please don’t ever feel you need to apologise for your English here, it’s well up to the job and I always appreciate your comments.
Ayano, Hi, wonderful to hear from you again.
I can’t imagine that anything I write could ever save anybody, but thanks for the comment!
For the benefit of other readers, the brevity of Ayano’s comment disguises the fact that she’s actually a philosopher. I still think often about your thoughts on the similarities between Aikido and painting Ayano.
Hi Julie,
>which doesn’t mean UP tight, ok..!
Tight-fisted perhaps? Heh just kidding.
I’ve just been over to read your post and I thought it was wonderful:
“time stops and the relationship between artist and artwork REALLY begins.”
I love that.
Everyone, here’s a clickable link for Julie’s post, please pop over and leave her a nice comment:
connecting with art and love
Hi Maggie,
Thanks very much for popping in and for your kind words.
>I always get my back up when confronted with the “accuracy takes out the feeling,”
It gets my back up too.
>But there is a difference between just drafting what you see and designing a picture.
You are absolutely right. I like Stape’s quote too. This is the gap between what we see and what we draw or paint that I was talking about. The designing happens – or can happen – in that gap.
I’ll be writing much more about this soon as I start to describe some of the practice I’ve been doing with composition lately. My mind is opening to a whole new way of working. I’m so excited about it and can’t wait to share it, but time is so short these days!
>Do you think the sharpness of the form turning in Sarget’s drawing helps the drawing overall? Do you think it should be more rounded?
Well, that depends. I tend to think the sharpness is a well-placed strategic choice, personally and it goes deeper than the optical to describing knowledge of the structure of the skull itself. In looking at some other male portraits in the book, it seems that Sargent had a liking for making the foreheads appear upright. If you look at the profile of a skull it is clearer to see it as upright and then a soft but distinct corner at the top. It certainly adds a strength of character. (Sargent may have reserved more roundedness for his female foreheads.)
In the portrait of Henry James in the same book, the sitter had a fairly broad and well- rounded head. You can tell by the outline of the top of the skull. (Let me know if you’d like a copy for viewing). Who knows if Sargent could actually see a boney corner there, but Sargent makes a subtle and clear distinction along the terminator again, to show the plane change from upright forehead to a top receeding plane, more like a cube with a softened corner. Or a “blockhead”, if you will. The roundness of the top of the skull along the outline is enough to describe the general roundedness of the head and the sharper terminator at the front speaks to the bone structure itself, imho.
I have read over the years from various sources, that good portrait and figure artists often use sharper edges and planes to describe the bonier parts of the body, reserving the more rounded transitions for the fleshier parts or females in general. Cooke’s Painting Techniques of the Masters comes to mind. Foreheads are kind of a conundrum, then, being both rounded and boney.
Cheek bones are “cut”, for instance and look nicely painted with a hard edge along the outline of the face there, while the soft fleshy areas beneath are by contrast more rounded and the edge along the outline there is treated more softly as well. Edges at the wrist bones, knees, and ankle bones can also be treated as harder edged. Ingres was a master at this.
So, for me, the sharper edge on the forehead is speaking to the bone structure underneath being closer to the surface of the skin there, whether it was visual or not. Also, sometimes I think the frontal plane on the skull can look flatter on some folks more than others so to exaggerate the difference between the front and top planes would not be out of line.
As for personal preference, I believe alot of forms can lose their sense of solidity, weight, dignity and strength when drawn too rounded or curvaciously, or tend towards a more feminine look in 2D, even if that is what is seen in real-life. There is something in straighter lines in a drawing that creates tension in ways curved lines do not and this can give a feeling of life to a drawing that doesn’t offer much opportunity for playing with rhythms. I like when this tension is showcased along the terminator for some reason.
Of course, there are alot of ways to handle the human form that are equally beautiful and effective. The translation is the art part of it, for sure.
hee hee Paul – not tight fisted either! Tight drawing only. Its so interesting that you mention Harold Speed.. I am TRYING to write a book on Learning and a student friend mentioned Speed too.. (sound of Twilight Zone tune, do do do do do do do doooo..). The difficult thing in writing for students is… THEY ONY WANT TO LOOK AT THE PICTURES. Aaaaaaagh. So, many times I start writing and say, you won’t learn how to do this by reading about it.. duh!!!! Thanks for directing folks to my blog. I keep it short. (see above..!)
Regarding craft and technical skill – I do think there is a point (which is sadly very early in the drawing process, meaning often a few layers before I am happy with an oil painting for example)(though that might imply that by the end, I am happy – usuallyI stop because I’ve Had Enough…) where no one but the artist or another, similarly skilled artist will notice if you put in more detail and care. I have students who attend class weekly and see my work in progress and OFTEN love something when its at a really ugly stage – this isn’t me being modest – and I wonder, WHY AM I BOTHERING… Then I remember, I bother because..I feel obliged! Now, back to the drawing board.. (don’t you love the internet?) Oh, and my students HAVE to say Thank you, and they are NEVER allowed to use the word Just. :-))
Hi Paul, I didnt read the book by Harold Speed, but I will have to read it,and about the music example yes, you are right, some music performers are incredible artist.I was mostly referring to those who are obligate to perform such as the book says, although I am not in a position to judge if they are or are not artist,i guess we all are part of the process of making art and keeping the flame going.Cheers
Sorry for the late replies all, it’s been a bit of a busy weekend!
Hi again Colleen,
Thanks very much for leaving such a detailed and carefully thought out comment. That kind of thing is really the lifeblood of this site, I really appreciate it.
I think you’re absolutely right about Sargent’s heads. I have the same book of his drawings as you, and in fact have copied the Henry James head too.
>the sharper edge on the forehead is speaking to the bone structure underneath being closer to the surface of the skin there, whether it was visual or not.
I agree, absolutely. I think Sargent is departing from the visual in order to make a stronger statement, to give the form more definition. He’s working in the gap to make the drawing live.
Hi Julie,
Thanks to you also for such a great comment – and one that made me laugh out loud more than once 🙂
>I am TRYING to write a book on Learning
Oh that’s very cool. Please keep me updated on your progress.
>I bother because..I feel obliged!
I know what you mean. Personally, I’d like to be creating pieces that speak to other people in some way, but I guess when it really comes down to it, I have to be happy. I have to feel I’ve done as well as I could possibly do with that piece. And of course, I rarely ever feel that so remain dissatisfied with everything to some extent. I just read a great post about that on Michael Nobbs excellent blog here: Hunting Woolly Mammoths. I love his writing.
>and they are NEVER allowed to use the word Just. :-))
Quite right too. Nothing we do is ‘just’ anything.
By the way Julie, I’ve got your email and will be getting back to you as soon as I can, next couple of days. Have been busy writing the next post this weekend, and am quite excited!
Hi Jesus, nice to see you back.
I really, really, really recommend the Speed book. I’m reading it now for what must be the fourth or fifth time, and still I find more wisdom in it with every reading. I think you’ll find much in it that you agree with.
>keeping the flame going.
Indeed.
I’m just getting started . Always enjoyed drawing, I just can’t seem to capture what I WANT. I’m not very good . Your article is very enlightening . I Won’t give up !
Hi Gee,
If you got into a car for the first time with no practice you wouldn’t expect to be able to drive it round a race track in record time. If sat down at a piano for the first time you and everyone around you would be pretty shocked if you could boogie woogie like professor longhair (look him up, he’s great).
It’s the same with drawing. If you’re really just starting out you might want to look at Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. It has some great exercises to get you over the initial hump.
Good luck!
I personally believe that those individuals who oppose realism simply do not have the will power or motivation to invest the time and study required to develop the skill level needed.
Abstract art can be done by anyone, including various members of the animal community, such as elephants, monkeys and cats!
Hehe, well that’s one way of looking at it 🙂
I think bad abstract art can be done by anyone, that’s true.
But I also think there is bad and good realistic art just as there is bad and good abstract art. I’m personally much less interested in abstract art than I am in representational art.
But I do believe that it’s healthy to keep an open mind. There may be elements of gesture, composition, colour design perhaps in some abstract art that you could learn form and perhaps even incorporate into our own work.
Hi Paul,
Great post and great comments below. I have lots to say, but now that I’ve finally read to the end I’ve forgotten most of it!
Mainly I guess I wanted to reassure you that within secondary school art education the emphasis is very much on observational drawing / painting – at least as a starting point – and even abstract work is encouraged to have a beginning that is founded in observation.
It is not the ‘copying what you see’ that strikes fear in the modern day art teacher (although we would probably prefer to say ‘drawing what you see’) but rather the students who wish to draw cartoons / vampires / fairies or some other imaginary form (not to say this isn’t possible – there are always ways to make great art submissions about just about anything). In other words, we LOVE students who draw what they see!
I must say, however, that while I think the swap of slaving with striving is an excellent one, I do understand where the phrase ‘slavishly copying’ comes from. There are always some students who are happy to grab any image (usually the nearest one to hand) and copy it without any evidence of thought going into it (other than that required to transcribe the image). The slavish remark is a spur thought up by teachers to encourage students to have input into the work themselves – to think about the composition and meaning that is expressed…to encourage students to use art to help them communicate something about the world.
Obviously, there are times when copying from others offers hugely beneficial learning experiences – in fact, most art teachers would argue that aside from experience / practise, learning from other artists is the best thing you can do. But we also want students to do more.
I appreciate the musical comparison by Jesus, above. Technical skill is an essential component…a wonderful component…but I think at some point, most artists want to move beyond this…to the the story.
Ok I am half asleep and probably not making sense…
Great blog. So nice to stumble upon someone who writes genuine articles rather than the spam-filled adsense driven blogs that fill the world.
Amiria
http://www.amiria.co.nz/artist/
Hi Paul,
I think I’m going to give this sight-size self portrait a try. I was wondering how did you set up your light source? (Forgive me if you wrote about it and I simply didn’t find it.)
P.S. Post your new paintings if you get a chance, I’m looking forward to seeing them!
Hi Chad,
I had the light back near the mirror and to the left of me and slightly above as I was looking at the mirror.
I had another light on the paper itself.
Both lights were attached to a microphone stand – they make great light stands!
I should have described that a little clearer, sorry. I’ll try to rectify that in a future post about lighting.
So true! Many of your statements are the same I made in the textpages of my website: http://www.walterleclairschilderijen.be
A pity my English is not good enough to translate them. Nevertheless, regarding art you seem to be a soulmate so to speak.
Walter
Thank you Walter!
Unfortunately my Dutch is equally bad, but your work is wonderful.
If you don’t go beyond this, you are a human Xerox machine. It takes work and skill to be a Xerox machine, but you are not creating. You are speaking a language by reading phrases beautifully from a phrasebook but you are not learning to truly communicate in your own words.