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Art School Twelve
Working With Form
Now in the real world, in proportion to our size as human beings, we are confronted with form. The first
impression one has concerning form is massiveness as in the sea, mountains, hills, clouds, plains,
cities. But this massiveness can even be sensed when looking at crystals of palladium under the electron microscope.
It is therefore necessary in these exercises to be able to successfully convey with shading and highlight and by other means a
sense of massiveness. Some artists that come to mind are Motherwell, Moore and so on. We live in an
existence where the eye also conveys to our minds not only the picture of detail, but also of volume. Here is the -- I'm looking for a synonym of the
word "challenge", it's such a worn out term and often quite stilted and a bit
arrogant -- perhaps I can invent something like trying to make a living to buy food, hence "chowlunge", or don't step in the stew as in not being "stewped".
Maybe
elsewhere some other time, perhaps the humor pages.
Anyway, here is the earnest of significant artwork in that there is a balance of sorts between detail and form. One cannot do a drawing and make something of it by the inclusion of detail alone to the exclusion of all else. Is there more than the two? Perhaps. You know something, there might be hundreds more criterion one could discover to place in the work. In digital art, I'm looking at the inclusion of surface features that, though quite separate than the subject, add a profundity to the portrayal of the work.
But here it is imperative to master form itself, oft times armed with no more than the pencil, or perhaps a stick of
charcoal. In mastering these things you can come to a sense of relief in that the tedium and the chore of the work of art is subdued if not shoved
aside and then you, the artists, can proceed with exuberance and actually enjoy what you're doing, making the work itself an accomplished and significant piece of art. And that's what we're about, isn't it?
It's what Vincent Van Gogh's elder relative, I think uncle, tried to get him to do (I saw the movie. Lust for Life with Kirk Douglas as
Vincent) (how do I know? I saw the movie.) (all right, so it's a visually oriented
existence. all the more reason to paint). Mauve gave Vincent casts (replications of statues or parts thereof in plaster) and told him to paint them. Vincent hated that and after a while he went out and painted "au plien air" outside but he was still working with forms.
It's as one of my art teachers told me in the conservative "Ruskin School of Drawing and of Fine Art" in the cast gallery out behind the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford University: "Priests do
penance, artist paint statues -- same difference."
"May I quote you?" I asked.
"No," She said, "...we'll leave it in its complexity. You can paint outdoors in the summer."
You see, I intensely disliked the cast gallery. It was religious art. Every statue was some sort of ancient Greek's idea of gods and goddesses. It was for them a
chowlunge; much livelihood in the productions of religious paraphernalia. Now what Van Gogh did for us was to graduate us from the kindergarten of the boot-lickers of idol groupies and into the joy of the real
existence free from all the tripe of traditionalistic dead-ending. There's a livelihood
in sucking up but it's a dead-end street from which there is virtually no return.
I was fascinated by a reality in the casts of the antiquitous statues, and that was the evidence of the depiction of time itself in the reproduction of the
deterioration and damage virtually every piece in that place sported in one way or another. A missing arm or nose hacked off by invading soldiers in the belief that they were disarming the
premises of it's supernatural power. Also time itself and the weathering of outside pieces showed their effects.
But it is necessary to work with volume, and the point of the teacher is well taken; you've got to work with something more than a fussy
fidgety squirming live model. You can make casts by enclosing the arms, or feet, or so on of a
volunteer in sort of bandages and making a mould for a pouring of plaster. I don't know how to do that so you'll have to find out perhaps from the internet somewhere because plaster can be very damaging to the skin or something so watch it. Otherwise perhaps somewhere in your
neighborhood there are statues, albeit maybe not the nude one you really need like those money-grubbing ancient Greeks made. Oh, they were good, but so what? If they got out of their rut, they would have been great.
But if you can find statues, do some paintings and drawings of them, at least once a week for a year of
something like that. We have to master the sense of depicting form in the work. Getting involved in the descriptive and the sketchy is a common temptation with the
amateur and the novice thinking to him or her self: "... ah, this is what I must do to produce art." Here's where the use of shading in design exercise comes in handy. As one teacher told me, "What we are after is the change of 'planes', not detail. Too brief a sketch of the surface features doesn't mean anything
until you make them mean something." I tried to take notes of what he was telling me to which he added without even glancing over his shoulder, "...that's
ridiculous." He didn't realize I was working of the depiction of time itself. But that's another exercise.
But you see, we are also concerned with form. The logical mind gets rapped up in the depiction of detail and surface features. But those who depict the awe of the massiveness of what people perceive visually in reality are able to impart the sense of professionalism that when the viewer of the artwork looks at the piece he or she knows they are being confronted with something significant. I mean, they've got to be moved. That's when you're professional and not just some amateur dabbling
around.
Massive or exquisite, the form is there. It's worth exercising to ferret out the skills to depict that on the picture plane or even in sculpture. Where you go from there will be vastly more intriguing and fascinating if you can first get there.
--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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