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Art School Five.
Drawing Significance
Establish a relationship of things: objects, spaces and lines. Keep checking against the horizontal and the vertical.
Establish your relationships primarily. You're not just representing a series of physical objects as if it were some sort of visual listing of what's in the drawing. You want to do that, go write up shopping lists and get out of art.
Check your major points and verify every change in angle with available verticals
and horizontals. With this type of drawing you are after creating a right appearance in the work of what you're drawing. They should be able to see not only what you're drawing but also why you drew it. They need to see the passion
along with the accuracy.
You're working on building up an exact relationship of points. Fix points in the work derived from absolutely fixed final points. It helps to take a bit of time to view the subject and find where you can build from a central point. Later, you can gain the skill of ascertaining a juxtaposition of points that you can build around.
Now see if you can get three pencils: an HB, a soft, and one in-between those two. You need to work on "edges".
The edges of the forms are very important. In reality forms aren't established by lines. If you are doing a line drawing for a variety of reasons than go ahead, use lines. It may be also possible to work on a drawing that uses both lines and shapes as well, but you're doing that for a special sort of statement.
But in reality, all forms have edges that contrast either heavily or lightly with something behind them or flowing from them. Consequently you will find the edge either hard or soft, with probable variables in between. The hard edge is one of maximum contrast and it is the highly contrasting dark or shadow side of the edge that is depicted and the succession of these will define the form.
Conversely, the soft edge is one of minimum contrast, as in an object barely visible through a fog. Here the edge is established by a gradation of light tones so that the edge of the object seems to vanish into the object behind. So
effects are achieved by establishing your edges. In reality no edge exists by itself. It's always defined by what's behind it. And what's behind the edge establishes the edge. Minimal contrast does the opposite of high contrast.
It's important for you the artist to study why this happens. It is what makes the drawing or the painting work. Greatness in art is completely unpredictable. As for the rest of society, everything a man does is a pun. The average man, of course, does not exist. Do as much as able with what is available and don't stint.
He who is able to make beauty out of garbage and refuse will be able to do so out of
asteroids and meteors. You are not waiting in a cell, but active in a studio.
At least I hope you aren't stuck in a cell, but whether you are or not, you
might be in a position where you don't have much to work with. Don't
worry about recourses, just use whatever is available at the time. When recourses
for a precedented activity are denied, begin an unprecedented activity with what is given to you.
Ingress reminds us, "...draw lines -- many lines; from memory or from nature. It is in this way that you will become a good artist." So there's something to be said for the line drawings as well. But just remember that every line implies an edge which can be seen as hard or soft in the finished work.
Corot pointed out that: "... the first two things to study are form and values. These two things are for me the serious basis of art. Color and execution give charm to the work." But in all this we should not forget the passion of expression. Corbet reminds us: "Every artist ought to be his own teacher. Each pupil [should] remain entirely free to search for the expression of his own individual conceptions."
The true poet is the one who is serious enough about his poetry to find the right
words, and the true artist is the one serious enough to find the right
expression.
--Fine art,
digital art, music,
several voice
introductions by me about my work, articles about my artwork
and other topics such as sociology,
the cosmos, economics,
education, medicine,
poetry, humor,
something I call premonitions,
and a series about covered bridges,
all by
yours truly, the webmaster, Paul A.L. Hall. There are feedback and exhaustive contents pages. Plus
my weblogs are
on site, an art
school and classes.
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