My drawing has taken another one of those mysterious steps forward. A big part of this improvement is my recent discovery (while in Europe) that to situate figures (or any object) in a landscape, one must first compose the landscape on the page, and place the figure within it. To make the figure the sole focus of the drawing is to NOT SITUATE the figure in relation to anything else, making the figure a portrait or a study, but probably not a composition.
This last point is becoming increasingly clear to me… the need to make a composition. Certain things arise in making a coherent composition that do not arise in making studies. First, one must consider the relation of the overall space to the more specific objects within that space. Second, one must consider perspective. Not simply linear perspective as usually understood (i.e., making houses and fences look like they recede)… or aerial perspective as usually understood (reducing tone and color saturation as objects recede). Instead, I'm thinking of perspective in the broadest possible way… as in… how does the visual field relate to myself.
The visual can relate two ways… first, in terms of visual perception (how do the objects appear to my vision)… and secondly, in psychological terms (what do these objects mean to me). These two things are related, as the ability to access psychological meanings is related to the ability to understand how things appear to you visually (visual perspective, so to speak). This seems intuitively true, as whenever we draw something well, we feel a connection to the drawing. We might think that that success of such a drawing magically derives from out connectedness the subject matter of the drawing….but I think that our connectedness to it derives first from our ability to draw it in the first place.
The kind of visual perspective required to make compositions (vs. studies) is important. To seriously persue visual perspective requires certain basic structures be enforced in a drawing. This might all seem trivial, but I think they are not so much trivial as they are fundamental… and like all fundamentals, they are easily overlooked… and the resulting works become unhinged. The first fundamental is the establishment of a horizon line. Without this, one can easily lose track up what is up and what is down. This is probably not a problem in figure studies and portraits and other such close-up work, where the object is not integrated into a visual space. But if you try to construct larger spaces, and to represent complex spatial relations, you must know what is above your eye line, and what is below.
It is not necessary to literally draw the horizon line (obviously), though it is useful to do so in the beginning of the drawing. I realize that doing so seem silly to a more experienced draftsman, who is (in a sense) beyond such rudimentary techniques, and can probably maintain a horizon line instinctively in their minds. But I have to wonder how many people can actually do this consistently… or how many people can render complex spatial relationships without such techniques.
I suspect many people begin their drawing by focusing on an object of interest and drawing it, and then fitting other things around it. These "other things" end up being the space in which the object is located… i.e., the context of the drawing. Such drawings are (in a sense) done in reverse… where the space is constructed AROUND the object, rather than the object being place WITHIN the space. The difference between these two approaches may not be very apparent in the finished work.
For example, if I draw a bottle sitting on a table top, I can approach it in either of these two ways. I can draw the table top and the surrounding space, and then situate the bottle on top of it. Or, I can draw the bottle, and then draw the table-top and surrounding space. The two drawings might be very similar… BUT… if I draw the space first, I am able to consider MANY possible relationships from the beginning, whereas if I prioritize the bottle by drawing it first, I can accommodate FAR FEWER spatial relationships… if for no other reason than that simply by choosing a size of the bottle (at the beginning of the drawing) I constrain the size of all the other relationships, and it is possible that I don't leave enough space for other visual elements to be realized. These unrealized relationships represent possible limits on the drawing.
By focusing on the object of interest, I feel like I a hamstring my drawings from the beginning. The drawing becomes a glorified study, rather than a composition… as the object isn't COMPOSED into a space, but the space retro-fitted around an object. It occurs to me that this has a parallel in personal identity… such as… do we exist in the world, or does the world revolve around us. When we become ego maniacal and demand that the world revolve around ourselves, we limit what we can consider. The ego maniac only considers things that directly relate to themselves at the moment, and therefore cut themselves off from maximum experience. Drawings that proceed from the focus on a single object have the same problem… they are egomaniacal drawings, so to speak.
At any rate, I suppose both approaches are valid, but I know for sure that taking the OVERALL approach is necessary for making the kinds of large narrative type paintings one might admire. When I see the David paintings, the Gericault paintings, and the Delacroix paintings in the Louvre… I know for a fact that I am looking at visual constructions of high complexity. I think to myself… "How does one get to that level of composing ideas?". It's tempting to think that their paintings result from some SUPER DRAWING SKILL and SUPER PAINTING SKILL, wherein they make things LOOK REAL. And while they do have high level drawing and painting skills, that is not what their paintings are fundamentally about.
Their paintings are fundamentally about composed elements… and those composed elements are realized through an appropriate level of drawing and painting skills. The more that one can draw and paint, the more things can be coherently incorporated into the composition. Consider Holbein's "The Ambassadors", with two richly clad figures standing on either side of a table that contains many symbolically important objects. Such a composition is not possible without the ability to draw and paint the many detailed elements of the painting. If Holbein's skills were less richly detailed, he would have to do a different composition. This is not to say that detailed painting is required to do great compositions… but some level of proficiency is required, otherwise visual elements cannot be rendered, leaving one fewer and fewer things to work with. After all, you need to have actual things you can represent and relate. At the very least, one's drawing and painting skills need to be appropriate to the ambition of the composition.
Without content, one is hard pressed to created meanings through composed associations. That's actually a good definition of composition… COMPOSED ASSOCIATIONS. You compose the associations of visual elements in order to convey some intended meanings. Without content (visual elements), you end up on the far abstract end of the spectrum, like Rothko, where you compose in color blocks. One can argue that Rothko's compositions are beautiful and meaningful… but the beauty and meaning of such works derives NOT from an expression of the intellect as it relates to the specifics of the visual world, but to unconscious associations between formal elements of line, color, shape, etc. Such highly abstracted relationships are not invalid, but I do not think they serve to purpose of expressing meanings directly, in the way that representational compositions can.
It is not necessary that one work in the styles of Gericault, or David, or Delacroix… or to use their subject matter. The issue is more fundamental than that. The issue is… how can one construct visual meaning in representational work. That meaning can be narrative, it can be symbolic, it can be allegorical, it can be whatever… but whatever form of meaning one pursues, it must be presented inside of the space of the painting in terms of composed elements.
I was talking earlier of the need to establish a horizon line, for the simple purposes of keeping track of what is above and below the eye level. But I've noticed something more than that… that the horizon line is necessary for projecting a ground plane… and for coherently establishing major shapes upon that ground plane. Imagine Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa". There are figures above the horizon line and below it, and they are pitched and tilted in complex relations… all of which are themselves related to the plane of the raft, which has it's own perspective. The point of this example isn't to exalt Gericault's draftsmanship, but to point out that the composition (composed elements) require that VISUAL PERSPECTIVE be established and maintained consistently throughout the painting. Without such discipline, not only couldn't all the complex figures be rendered.. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY… the composition could not be realized. A figure draftsman might be able to draw each of the figures individually, but to have them all composed together into a coherent space is a different issue.
This is my big point… that composition relies on perspective. We tend to think that perspective is simply a rudimentary drawing device… and it is. But it is also a compositional device, and it is a compositional device first. This is where drawing and composition blend together. To talk about drawing and composition as distinct things is something of an artificial distinction. The term composition is usually considered to be some highly abstract idea of the painting, whereas drawing is considered to be the way in which such a high abstraction is realized. But composition is really the arrangement of space and the visual elements in that space. It might begin in the imagination and in abstract notions, but it takes shapes by a consideration of the rectangular canvas, and of the projection of space within that rectangle. In other words, it takes shapes through the establishment of a visual perspective system that is unique to each painting. Such a system sets up and establishes the drawing, so much so that I would call it the meta-drawing. Once established, the drawing takes place within that compositional structure.
I'm sure this sounds very longwinded and tortured and hopelessly idealistic. But I don't think it is. It might be longwinded to explain, but the realization of these ideas is elegant in actual practice. How else can meaningful representational paintings be created?
Showing posts with label art method. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art method. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Chaotic Drawing
I bought a cheap sketch book, 6 inches by 9 inches.... Canson, 100
sheets, 65lb paper... whatever... the point is, it cost $4.50. I bought a
cheap one so that I could make LOTS of fast sketches in public, without
worrying about filling a "nice" sketchbook with fucked up drawings. I
didn't want to overthink it, or worry about making a "good" drawing. I
just sit in the park, or lean against a wall, or even just walk down the
street... and I make very rapid drawings of people as they walk by.
The first day I did it (three weeks ago), I made 70 separate drawings in about 3 hours. Some of the drawings were not so good, but most were quite effective at capturing the attitude or gesture of the person being drawn. Sometimes I got the anatomy right... sometimes I drew the figure more like a cartoon... sometimes I exaggerated features like a charicature... and so on. The cool thing was... that by going after LOTS of sketches, rather than laboring over a single sketch, I am capturing a lot of interesting moments that would otherwise have been missed. This 100 page sketch book is nearly full now, and the sketches constitute a real study of the postures and attitudes of people in public.
Most interestingly in all of this are the discoveries I am making about people in public. The thing is (and I have mentioned this before) people in American never sit still. Everyone is always moving, always modifying their posture, always behaving in an anxious fashion. It is rare for someone to stand still. These quick drawings reflect this. On average, I'd say I have maybe 10 seconds MAX to register my impression of the person, before they either rapidly walk by, or before they change their posture (if they are sitting down).
Typically what I do is make a quick series of lines to register essential points on their body. After they have passed, I will invent missing parts, or maybe graft the missing parts from the next person that walks by.
Basically, it doesn't matter what I do. It doesn't matter because I am not after a refined drawing. And that is my insight... that a refined drawing or portrait IS NOT POSSIBLE, because the public person is not refined, not coherent, not stable. The physical anxiety displayed via endless movement is incommensurate with a stable identity. Why labor to draw such chaos in a controlled fashion? So instead, I simply draw what is perceptible to me in the very small window of time I have.... ten seconds or so.
If such a drawing is fractured, incomplete, inaccurate... then that is ok. In fact, it is more than ok... it is actually a good thing... because I am actually capturing the fleeting nature of such public encounters. Why demand that drawings of a figure in public be refined and complete, when NO SUCH interactions in life are refined or complete? I could say that the incompleteness of my drawings are actually what makes them honest.... that which is "inaccurate" about them is precisely why they are accurate.
I have to amend the earlier statement that refined drawings are not possible. Obviously they are, but only through INVENTION. One can invent the vast amount of information that is missed in a 10 second encounter on the street. That does not make such a refined drawing irrelevant, but it does VERY LIKELY make it less honest (in a way) than the rapid drawing. The rapid drawing registers only those strong impressions present in a flash of they eye.
It's like a drunken cab ride at 2 in the morning. As you lean your head against the window, and look up at the passing buildings at a funny angle... what is it that you will remember later. Probably not much. A series of fleeting impressions... bursts of neon and street lights.... strange moments here and there. Just raw impressions of the city at night.
You could go to your studio and reconstruct the experience into a coherent view of the city. You could bring a rational order to what was (in the experience of it) a chaotic experience. But what would be the point? What is it you would capture? That which exists chaotically needs a drawing method that can deal with that chaos. Drawing methods that required refined and rationalized methods CANNOT properly record chaos, because they require more processing than happens in 10 seconds. No... the drawing needs to RESPECT the incompleteness of perception... by allowing some way of recording incompleteness.
The rapid sketch accomplishes this. Such sketches serve as the basis for paintings. Such sketches can serve as the basis for more refined drawings. But what they can't do is BEGIN as refined drawings... or end up as refined drawings. The inaccuracies and exaggerations and missing elements in these sketches are AS IMPORTANT as that which is present. Such errors and omissions in the drawing are actually SELECTIONS you make within the 10 second window of time.. and so the short list of that which you include, and that which you don't... THAT is the truth of the chaotic moment.
The first day I did it (three weeks ago), I made 70 separate drawings in about 3 hours. Some of the drawings were not so good, but most were quite effective at capturing the attitude or gesture of the person being drawn. Sometimes I got the anatomy right... sometimes I drew the figure more like a cartoon... sometimes I exaggerated features like a charicature... and so on. The cool thing was... that by going after LOTS of sketches, rather than laboring over a single sketch, I am capturing a lot of interesting moments that would otherwise have been missed. This 100 page sketch book is nearly full now, and the sketches constitute a real study of the postures and attitudes of people in public.
Most interestingly in all of this are the discoveries I am making about people in public. The thing is (and I have mentioned this before) people in American never sit still. Everyone is always moving, always modifying their posture, always behaving in an anxious fashion. It is rare for someone to stand still. These quick drawings reflect this. On average, I'd say I have maybe 10 seconds MAX to register my impression of the person, before they either rapidly walk by, or before they change their posture (if they are sitting down).
Typically what I do is make a quick series of lines to register essential points on their body. After they have passed, I will invent missing parts, or maybe graft the missing parts from the next person that walks by.
Basically, it doesn't matter what I do. It doesn't matter because I am not after a refined drawing. And that is my insight... that a refined drawing or portrait IS NOT POSSIBLE, because the public person is not refined, not coherent, not stable. The physical anxiety displayed via endless movement is incommensurate with a stable identity. Why labor to draw such chaos in a controlled fashion? So instead, I simply draw what is perceptible to me in the very small window of time I have.... ten seconds or so.
If such a drawing is fractured, incomplete, inaccurate... then that is ok. In fact, it is more than ok... it is actually a good thing... because I am actually capturing the fleeting nature of such public encounters. Why demand that drawings of a figure in public be refined and complete, when NO SUCH interactions in life are refined or complete? I could say that the incompleteness of my drawings are actually what makes them honest.... that which is "inaccurate" about them is precisely why they are accurate.
I have to amend the earlier statement that refined drawings are not possible. Obviously they are, but only through INVENTION. One can invent the vast amount of information that is missed in a 10 second encounter on the street. That does not make such a refined drawing irrelevant, but it does VERY LIKELY make it less honest (in a way) than the rapid drawing. The rapid drawing registers only those strong impressions present in a flash of they eye.
It's like a drunken cab ride at 2 in the morning. As you lean your head against the window, and look up at the passing buildings at a funny angle... what is it that you will remember later. Probably not much. A series of fleeting impressions... bursts of neon and street lights.... strange moments here and there. Just raw impressions of the city at night.
You could go to your studio and reconstruct the experience into a coherent view of the city. You could bring a rational order to what was (in the experience of it) a chaotic experience. But what would be the point? What is it you would capture? That which exists chaotically needs a drawing method that can deal with that chaos. Drawing methods that required refined and rationalized methods CANNOT properly record chaos, because they require more processing than happens in 10 seconds. No... the drawing needs to RESPECT the incompleteness of perception... by allowing some way of recording incompleteness.
The rapid sketch accomplishes this. Such sketches serve as the basis for paintings. Such sketches can serve as the basis for more refined drawings. But what they can't do is BEGIN as refined drawings... or end up as refined drawings. The inaccuracies and exaggerations and missing elements in these sketches are AS IMPORTANT as that which is present. Such errors and omissions in the drawing are actually SELECTIONS you make within the 10 second window of time.. and so the short list of that which you include, and that which you don't... THAT is the truth of the chaotic moment.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Continuity
Producing artwork is often thought of as requiring that one find a rhythm, or a groove, or a process that allows one to produce the work on a consistent basis. This seems to be the case, and not just for art, but for anything. To do a thing consistently is simply to do it over and over again within some period of time such that each doing of it builds on the previous act of doing it. These connected experiences produce momentum, or forward movement... which is not the same as a series of experiences over time that are not connected. Another term for this is continuity.
If you run every day, then each run exists not only as its own event, but becomes connected to the run from the day before, and leads into the run you do the next day. This connectivity between events is "continuity". Continuity is not contained in any single run… it is what you get when you have a series of connected runs. It is the continuity of actions that gets you into shape, not any particular run you do on any given day.
It occurred to me that without continuity, you can't get anything done… and you can't improve. For instance, if you run once a week, then each run exists as an isolated activity. It is not connected to the run from the week before because too much time has passed.. and it doesn't lead into the run coming up next week. It is a sad and hopeless thing to run once a week. You can't get in shape, you can't improve. The best you can do is exhaust yourself once a week, and go nowhere.
If you sketch once a week, or make a drawing now and again with no regularity… then there is no continuity… and therefore no improvement. It can be depressing and pathetic to go on that way. That is the challenge the artist faces… to create and maintain continuity. Without it, there is no chance to improve and develop. The good news is, it is surprisingly simple to create continuity. All you have to do is get off your butt and do some drawing. Boom. Instant forward progress. Be continuous.
If you run every day, then each run exists not only as its own event, but becomes connected to the run from the day before, and leads into the run you do the next day. This connectivity between events is "continuity". Continuity is not contained in any single run… it is what you get when you have a series of connected runs. It is the continuity of actions that gets you into shape, not any particular run you do on any given day.
It occurred to me that without continuity, you can't get anything done… and you can't improve. For instance, if you run once a week, then each run exists as an isolated activity. It is not connected to the run from the week before because too much time has passed.. and it doesn't lead into the run coming up next week. It is a sad and hopeless thing to run once a week. You can't get in shape, you can't improve. The best you can do is exhaust yourself once a week, and go nowhere.
If you sketch once a week, or make a drawing now and again with no regularity… then there is no continuity… and therefore no improvement. It can be depressing and pathetic to go on that way. That is the challenge the artist faces… to create and maintain continuity. Without it, there is no chance to improve and develop. The good news is, it is surprisingly simple to create continuity. All you have to do is get off your butt and do some drawing. Boom. Instant forward progress. Be continuous.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Figure identity... drawing vs. formal means
A funny thing happened with a painting I was working on. I had developed a figures head with a simplified profile eye that was cloaked in shadow (you could not see the eye itself). Without an eye, the figure isn't even animate... not even a person... it's just a human body with no soul. It had no unique identity. As a consequence, I think the figure doesn't command psychological attention from the viewer. In this case, it just melted into the background like a piece of furniture (albeit maybe slightly more interesting than furniture)... and made worse because it was the same tonality as the background.
So I was trying a bunch of tricks to bring this identity-less figure forward. I tried to contrast it with the background, making it brighter and/or using complementary colors in the background. In other words, I was trying to use formal devices. But what was needed in this case was actually the psychological device of depicting a real person. So I developed the head to a greater degree, including an eye. Now the figure separates from the background, and NOT because of formal qualities, but because of the psychological quality that comes from the figure having an identity.
Despite the modernist assertion that formal qualities are sufficient for picture making, it seem they are not sufficient when the picture contains figures. Or at least I can say, that they can come up short on our intentions. In my case, I wanted that figure to command attention as a unique person. But without particularity (and eye), it stayed in the realm of formal abstraction, and didn't register psychologically.
This seems related to the issue of abstract (geometric) logic vs. representational logic. I had asserted that geometric logic can define interesting formal relationships when the objects being so arranged are themselves abstract, but that those relations may make no sense vis-a-vis the objects represented. So it would seem with formal qualities of painting (color, value, chroma, etc)... that they cannot not necessarily imbue the figure with meaning.
Here's a further bit of theorizing. The particularity that is required to make a "figure shape" become a unique figure is uncertain. I'm not sure where the line is... but you know it when you see it. I knew that my figure needed an eye to become real. So here's a cool question... is the insertion of an eye a "formal" act? Certainly one has to use some formal device to place the eye, but the eye could be inserted in many ways and would have the same (general) effect of making the figure particular. Therefore, the formal manner in which the eye is painted might affect many things, but I don't feel correct in saying that the eye is a formal device. What I want to say is that the eye is a drawing device, which means I'm considering drawing apart from any formal issue.
Putting aside all the counter arguments to the idea that drawing isn't a formal device, I can instead just consider drawing as something like... "The placement of intended components"... or something like that. I wanted an eye, and so I painted it... and though painting is a formal means... the formal means was controlled FUNDAMENTALLY by the intention to "place an eye"... which is drawing.
So I was trying a bunch of tricks to bring this identity-less figure forward. I tried to contrast it with the background, making it brighter and/or using complementary colors in the background. In other words, I was trying to use formal devices. But what was needed in this case was actually the psychological device of depicting a real person. So I developed the head to a greater degree, including an eye. Now the figure separates from the background, and NOT because of formal qualities, but because of the psychological quality that comes from the figure having an identity.
Despite the modernist assertion that formal qualities are sufficient for picture making, it seem they are not sufficient when the picture contains figures. Or at least I can say, that they can come up short on our intentions. In my case, I wanted that figure to command attention as a unique person. But without particularity (and eye), it stayed in the realm of formal abstraction, and didn't register psychologically.
This seems related to the issue of abstract (geometric) logic vs. representational logic. I had asserted that geometric logic can define interesting formal relationships when the objects being so arranged are themselves abstract, but that those relations may make no sense vis-a-vis the objects represented. So it would seem with formal qualities of painting (color, value, chroma, etc)... that they cannot not necessarily imbue the figure with meaning.
Here's a further bit of theorizing. The particularity that is required to make a "figure shape" become a unique figure is uncertain. I'm not sure where the line is... but you know it when you see it. I knew that my figure needed an eye to become real. So here's a cool question... is the insertion of an eye a "formal" act? Certainly one has to use some formal device to place the eye, but the eye could be inserted in many ways and would have the same (general) effect of making the figure particular. Therefore, the formal manner in which the eye is painted might affect many things, but I don't feel correct in saying that the eye is a formal device. What I want to say is that the eye is a drawing device, which means I'm considering drawing apart from any formal issue.
Putting aside all the counter arguments to the idea that drawing isn't a formal device, I can instead just consider drawing as something like... "The placement of intended components"... or something like that. I wanted an eye, and so I painted it... and though painting is a formal means... the formal means was controlled FUNDAMENTALLY by the intention to "place an eye"... which is drawing.
Abstract Logic vs. Representational Logic
The topic (Abstract Logic vs. Representational Logic) arises when we design using the armature of the rectangle, and it has to do with how we perceive abstract shapes and relations, vs. how we perceive representational shapes and relations.
This issue came up as I was trying to compose a picture based on a very quick and sketchy line drawing I had done of four guys sitting on the beach in Barcelona. I liked the drawing a lot, and was trying to find a way to compose a painting from it. The difficulty was that it was so sketchy and linear, that I thought it wouldn't benefit from being painted. There was little form, value or color in the sketch. It seemed a poor candidate for a painting.
So I scanned the drawing and started playing with it in Illustrator. I wanted to find a way to place it within a rectangle that might bring out some qualities I thought were interesting. I was able to change the size of the drawing in relation to the overall rectangle, and to play with it's position. I was also able to superimpose an armature, and to note relations between the various major linear divisions of space and the drawing itself. So anyway, I settled on a composition that I felt good about.
But a funny thing happened when I actually started making the painting... these abstract design qualities that I thought I had zeroed in on, never came through in actual fact. It was obvious that the elements of the drawing were so sparse, that there was no interest in the image. I was hoping that the design of the placement and the scale of the space would make for an interesting abstract quality... but it didn't happen.
This failure revealed something very interesting... which is that there is a fundamental difference between the way we consider abstract things, and the way we consider "real" things. If you look at the images here, there are two that have the drawing in it, and two that have rectangles as abstract stand-ins for the figures. It's interesting to observe how symmetrically correct the figures are in the image beach-real-armature.jpg. But when you remove the armature (in beach-real-no-armature.jpg) the sense of the figures being locked into the armature disappears. Instead the figures just seem to be floating inside a lot of white-space.
This "floating in white space" was intentional... I wanted to compose them figures to highlight the isolation they had when I drew them. After all, they had been a small cluster of figures on a huge expanse of beach, with nothing around them. The analytical "composing" I did was to try and create some abstract design logic that underlay they simplicity of the drawing. But it never came through.
I think this is due to the fact that we just don't perceive representational objects as pure abstraction. If you look at the other pair of images (beach-abstract-armature and beach-abstract-no-armature), you can see that even with the armature removed, the abstract rectangles "read" as being composed geometrically. Abstract things can be read abstractly.
But "representational" things are read primarily as representations. It's as if we need to understand the meaning of the things represented... how they relate to each other, to the things around them.. to the entire "real" meaning of the space they're in. But abstract things have NO real relations, and so we ONLY see abstract relations... and that is the PRIMARY way we see them.
It makes me wonder about the nature of "abstract" composition.... that is... composition that uses geometry to divide space into linear and area relationships. I am convinced by the many examples I've seen that it must be true, that geometric placement matters. However, as my example above shows... it is not sufficient in the case of representation (and is the ONLY thing that matters with abstract content).
Usually the value of geometric composition is explained as some kind of "subconscious" force... a subconscious "sense" of formal placement. Even if we allow that this is true, and recognize that it is secondary to the "representational logic" of the things depicted.... it is still not clear what the relation between geometry and the things represented.
Again, geometric composition is seen as an underlying FORMAL concern... but I fear that this kind of categorization produces a representation/abstraction dichotomy... or a dichotomy between "representational logic" and "geometric logic". But I think that geometry has to be related to representation in some way. How? I'm not sure how to characterize the relationship... but I know it has to exist.
When I consider how I approached my drawing, I can see that I did NOT correspond the geometric design with the figures being represented... other than to place them within a large space in a symmetrical way. However, the representational logic of the figures isn't really about the space "around" the figures, so much as it is about the space "within" the grouping. This represents a disconnect between composition and the figures. And so on.
This issue came up as I was trying to compose a picture based on a very quick and sketchy line drawing I had done of four guys sitting on the beach in Barcelona. I liked the drawing a lot, and was trying to find a way to compose a painting from it. The difficulty was that it was so sketchy and linear, that I thought it wouldn't benefit from being painted. There was little form, value or color in the sketch. It seemed a poor candidate for a painting.
So I scanned the drawing and started playing with it in Illustrator. I wanted to find a way to place it within a rectangle that might bring out some qualities I thought were interesting. I was able to change the size of the drawing in relation to the overall rectangle, and to play with it's position. I was also able to superimpose an armature, and to note relations between the various major linear divisions of space and the drawing itself. So anyway, I settled on a composition that I felt good about.
But a funny thing happened when I actually started making the painting... these abstract design qualities that I thought I had zeroed in on, never came through in actual fact. It was obvious that the elements of the drawing were so sparse, that there was no interest in the image. I was hoping that the design of the placement and the scale of the space would make for an interesting abstract quality... but it didn't happen.
This failure revealed something very interesting... which is that there is a fundamental difference between the way we consider abstract things, and the way we consider "real" things. If you look at the images here, there are two that have the drawing in it, and two that have rectangles as abstract stand-ins for the figures. It's interesting to observe how symmetrically correct the figures are in the image beach-real-armature.jpg. But when you remove the armature (in beach-real-no-armature.jpg) the sense of the figures being locked into the armature disappears. Instead the figures just seem to be floating inside a lot of white-space.
This "floating in white space" was intentional... I wanted to compose them figures to highlight the isolation they had when I drew them. After all, they had been a small cluster of figures on a huge expanse of beach, with nothing around them. The analytical "composing" I did was to try and create some abstract design logic that underlay they simplicity of the drawing. But it never came through.
I think this is due to the fact that we just don't perceive representational objects as pure abstraction. If you look at the other pair of images (beach-abstract-armature and beach-abstract-no-armature), you can see that even with the armature removed, the abstract rectangles "read" as being composed geometrically. Abstract things can be read abstractly.
But "representational" things are read primarily as representations. It's as if we need to understand the meaning of the things represented... how they relate to each other, to the things around them.. to the entire "real" meaning of the space they're in. But abstract things have NO real relations, and so we ONLY see abstract relations... and that is the PRIMARY way we see them.
It makes me wonder about the nature of "abstract" composition.... that is... composition that uses geometry to divide space into linear and area relationships. I am convinced by the many examples I've seen that it must be true, that geometric placement matters. However, as my example above shows... it is not sufficient in the case of representation (and is the ONLY thing that matters with abstract content).
Usually the value of geometric composition is explained as some kind of "subconscious" force... a subconscious "sense" of formal placement. Even if we allow that this is true, and recognize that it is secondary to the "representational logic" of the things depicted.... it is still not clear what the relation between geometry and the things represented.
Again, geometric composition is seen as an underlying FORMAL concern... but I fear that this kind of categorization produces a representation/abstraction dichotomy... or a dichotomy between "representational logic" and "geometric logic". But I think that geometry has to be related to representation in some way. How? I'm not sure how to characterize the relationship... but I know it has to exist.
When I consider how I approached my drawing, I can see that I did NOT correspond the geometric design with the figures being represented... other than to place them within a large space in a symmetrical way. However, the representational logic of the figures isn't really about the space "around" the figures, so much as it is about the space "within" the grouping. This represents a disconnect between composition and the figures. And so on.
Cast Drawing: Unexpected Lessons Learned
I'm really surprised by how many drawing and general art issues are raised by cast drawing.
I started out wanting to execute a cast drawing in the manner of the one I've seen in books (and online) that are done by the contemporary realist schools. These drawings are very illusionistic, to the point where you sometimes can't tell the difference between a photo of the cast and a photo of the drawing. I know that illusionism can be referred to as naturalism, but I'll use term illusionism instead, as the term seems to refer directly to the objective of creating an optical illusion of nature.
The various approaches to doing these drawings seem pretty much the same, as they describe a careful approach to sight size measuring (for linear placement) and side-by-side observation (for the tonal work).
LINE vs. MASS
What isn't made clear is that the linear part of the drawing, though very careful, does not exist for it's own sake, but rather to setup the tonal work. These types of cast drawings are not line drawings at all. It's as if the drawing is a super accurate tonal work, whose linear beginning is really just a super carefully measure linear placement. The value of the line drawing is to place obvious contour lines, and placing the lines of features. However, because so much of the drawing will ultimately involve much drawing (tonal mass drawing) in the interior, it is challenging to know what to measure with line, or what to observe with tonal work.
I'm am thinking of this distinction between measurement and observation. After all, it seems difficult to measure tonal masses. The core shadow line can be measured and lightly indicated, as can more obvious tones that are delimited by clear edges (that might have been part of the linear part of the drawing). However, smooth transitions of tone (by their nature) cannot be measured by an edge, and so they must be closely observed.
On the other hand, linear work can be measured more easily, even on smooth contours, since it is a rare smooth contour that can't be seen as a series of straight edges… i.e., the changes in line direction that result from the inevitable plane changes that occur on most things.
Of course, this distinction between measuring and observing is not absolute, as at times, it seems better to observe linear relationships, rather than measuring.
So I guess the point here is that cast drawing in this way highlights the boundary between line drawing and mass drawing, and that boundary is confusing. What is the value of line in a tonal drawing? How does line relate to tone in such a drawing.
ILLUSION vs. REPRESENTATION
A second issue that becomes really clear in this type of cast drawing is one that arises out of the objective of creating such a completely illusionistic drawing. The level of illusion is so complete that it seems to push beyond representation. It makes me wonder if illusion and representation are two different things.
Granting that no drawing is literally the same as the subject, and granting that all drawings employ some means… it still seems that illusion attempts to mimic the lines and tones of nature so closely as to be indistinguishable from (say) a photograph of the subject. Since a representation has to represent "in terms" of something, I wonder if illusionism can be said to be an "in terms of" translation. Instead, illusions of this nature seem to require a bit-by-bit sameness. Any deviation from illusion is considered a deficiency. But again, if there is no difference between a photo of the cast, and the cast itself, then where is the representation?
CONTEMPORARY REALISTS vs. PAST MASTERS
This issue is a continuation of the "illusion vs. representation" question. I could rephrase it by asking...Is Jacob Collins a greater painter than Da Vinci? Or for that matter, are any of the many well-trained contemporary realists better painters than master painters of the past?
This question first came up in my mind during my time at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (PAFA), when various teachers would show reproductions of contemporary realists paintings in class. Imagine the situation... you're standing there in class struggling to paint the figure in something resembling reality, and the teacher shows you paintings that are illusionistic. I remember thinking that the level of illusion in those paintings was far more than in anything by DaVinci, or Michaelangelo, or Rubens, or Rembrandt, or Velasquez, or any of the master painters of the past that are so revered.
I tried to make this observation to a few people at the time, but I hardly had words for it. Now, the question becomes obvious. Think about it this way.... nobody confuses the Mona Lisa with a photograph. Michaelangelo's sculptures are not illusionistic. Rembrandt's portraits are strong representations, but I wouldn't call them illusionistic.
As far as drawings go, renaissance master drawings are certainly not illusionistic. Even the carefully rendered, long pose figure drawings from the Beaux Arts type students of the 19th century (which are pretty illusionistic) are not as illusionistic as what some contemporary realists drawings.
So the question is… how is it that 20th century contemporary realists can create these illusionistic drawings and paintings, yet they did not in the past? And does this represent an advancement? I suppose the answer here depends on what your standard is for art. If you think illusion is the goal, then the contemporary artists might be inherently superior. If some other form of representation is your standard, then they are not inherently superior
DOES ILLUSION TRANSCEND REPRESENTATION, OR DOES IT DEVOLVE INTO PURELY VISUAL MIMICRY?
Achieving illusion seems to employ many the methods of traditional drawing, and then some. The "and-then-some" I have in mind is the meticulous and time consuming task of measuring line and observing tone so closely, that one can mimic ones optical perception. I'm not sure whether it is transcending representational drawing, or simply devolving into sheer observation.
If it is transcending representation, then how? What is the difference between representation and illusion that would be transcendent? One way I can think of describing the difference between a representational master drawing and an illusionistic drawing, is that the former was probably done in a few hours, whereas the latter might have taken weeks or months. What is achieved by this investment in time is a progressively more accurate drawing and tonal rendering. But what is the nature of this accuracy?
The accuracy is judged against visual perception. After all, with the sight-size approach, you visually compare one thing to another, with "sameness" being the standard. Achieving this sameness is no small matter, and it seems that some abstract processes are required to construct the drawing, and plan the tonal work, etc. To that degree, striving for the illusion sets up a series of drawing objectives. But it seems that these objectives, with all of their virtuous qualities and abstractness, end up simply serving as a scaffolding for a finishing process of progressively purer and purer observation.
Think about it. What does it mean to take a day or two to accurately measure and draw the cast, and to block out light and dark masses in a general way… only to then spend the next month meticulously toning in the interior one pencil point mark at a time? I cannot see the abstraction in it. If drawing is an abstract system of mark making, such that a drawing never ceases to be abstract… never shifts gears into pure observation... then what is the status of illusionistic drawing? It seems like illusionistic drawing does turn away from drawing system, and becomes pure observation… and it seems like it must do this… because it is measured against a direct comparison to our optical perception of nature.
IS ILLUSION A PROPER LEARNING OBJECTIVE?
I'm conflicted on this question. Obviously, I'm not talking from a vantage point of any kind of mastery of illusion. I'm sitting here struggling. Despite my critical tone, I'm actually finding the process of doing these drawings to be enormously useful in learning to draw better.
Illusion seems to be a good learning objective, in that to create an illusion, one must execute each step to a high degree. Any flaw in the linear drawing will wreak havoc with the later portions of the drawing. Any failure to observe tone well will mean your tonal ranges will be off, and the drawing will not compare to the subject. And so on and so on.
Illusion of this kind is so totally unforgiving, that you must execute the necessary steps flawlessly. That kind of pressure forces you to think and rethink and rethink again all your drawing steps. You are forced to understand these steps, to understand the order in which they are done, and how one steps leads to another… how one step affects another, etc. It's as if illusionistic drawing implies a firm grasp of general drawing knowledge and skill. I think this may be so, but I'm not sure.
The reason it may not be so, is that I can imagine people who are temperamentally suited to spending long periods of time engaged in close visual observation. I can imagine these people as being able to observe nature with a finer and finer scrutiny, and to make endless pencil point marks on paper to record their observations. Of course, it is fanciful to think that any human could simple observe isolated points of tone floating in their visual field. I know that these people must learn many things and execute several preparatory drawing steps before their natural abilities at close visual scrutiny can kick in. But, once it does kick in… are they actually drawing anymore? If drawing is understood as an abstract system of representation, does visual mimicry count as drawing?
These types of questions matter to me because I need to legitimize the time that would be required to produce an illusion. The two cast drawings I've done in the past two weeks have been representational, but not illusionistic. Would spending a month or more on tonal work be worth it. I can think of two possible answers. The first is that it is not worth it. This verdict would derive from the idea that illusion does not transcend representation, but simply devolves into a non-abstract perceptual approach that is devoid of artistic selection.
The other answer would be that it is worth it. This verdict could be based on the presumption that sophisticated tonal work, and the illusion it creates, is an end in itself. However, I don't believe that is illusion is an end in itself. In which case, the only reason I can see why it is worth it would be that pursuing a complete tonal illusion would force me to account for all perceptible reality set before me, and that such a strict and difficult exercise would expand my visual awareness in some way. This actually doesn't sound unreasonable, though I would rather know ahead of time that this was true, as it would something big like that to motivate me spend so much time on apparently mundane tasks.
I started out wanting to execute a cast drawing in the manner of the one I've seen in books (and online) that are done by the contemporary realist schools. These drawings are very illusionistic, to the point where you sometimes can't tell the difference between a photo of the cast and a photo of the drawing. I know that illusionism can be referred to as naturalism, but I'll use term illusionism instead, as the term seems to refer directly to the objective of creating an optical illusion of nature.
The various approaches to doing these drawings seem pretty much the same, as they describe a careful approach to sight size measuring (for linear placement) and side-by-side observation (for the tonal work).
LINE vs. MASS
What isn't made clear is that the linear part of the drawing, though very careful, does not exist for it's own sake, but rather to setup the tonal work. These types of cast drawings are not line drawings at all. It's as if the drawing is a super accurate tonal work, whose linear beginning is really just a super carefully measure linear placement. The value of the line drawing is to place obvious contour lines, and placing the lines of features. However, because so much of the drawing will ultimately involve much drawing (tonal mass drawing) in the interior, it is challenging to know what to measure with line, or what to observe with tonal work.
I'm am thinking of this distinction between measurement and observation. After all, it seems difficult to measure tonal masses. The core shadow line can be measured and lightly indicated, as can more obvious tones that are delimited by clear edges (that might have been part of the linear part of the drawing). However, smooth transitions of tone (by their nature) cannot be measured by an edge, and so they must be closely observed.
On the other hand, linear work can be measured more easily, even on smooth contours, since it is a rare smooth contour that can't be seen as a series of straight edges… i.e., the changes in line direction that result from the inevitable plane changes that occur on most things.
Of course, this distinction between measuring and observing is not absolute, as at times, it seems better to observe linear relationships, rather than measuring.
So I guess the point here is that cast drawing in this way highlights the boundary between line drawing and mass drawing, and that boundary is confusing. What is the value of line in a tonal drawing? How does line relate to tone in such a drawing.
ILLUSION vs. REPRESENTATION
A second issue that becomes really clear in this type of cast drawing is one that arises out of the objective of creating such a completely illusionistic drawing. The level of illusion is so complete that it seems to push beyond representation. It makes me wonder if illusion and representation are two different things.
Granting that no drawing is literally the same as the subject, and granting that all drawings employ some means… it still seems that illusion attempts to mimic the lines and tones of nature so closely as to be indistinguishable from (say) a photograph of the subject. Since a representation has to represent "in terms" of something, I wonder if illusionism can be said to be an "in terms of" translation. Instead, illusions of this nature seem to require a bit-by-bit sameness. Any deviation from illusion is considered a deficiency. But again, if there is no difference between a photo of the cast, and the cast itself, then where is the representation?
CONTEMPORARY REALISTS vs. PAST MASTERS
This issue is a continuation of the "illusion vs. representation" question. I could rephrase it by asking...Is Jacob Collins a greater painter than Da Vinci? Or for that matter, are any of the many well-trained contemporary realists better painters than master painters of the past?
This question first came up in my mind during my time at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (PAFA), when various teachers would show reproductions of contemporary realists paintings in class. Imagine the situation... you're standing there in class struggling to paint the figure in something resembling reality, and the teacher shows you paintings that are illusionistic. I remember thinking that the level of illusion in those paintings was far more than in anything by DaVinci, or Michaelangelo, or Rubens, or Rembrandt, or Velasquez, or any of the master painters of the past that are so revered.
I tried to make this observation to a few people at the time, but I hardly had words for it. Now, the question becomes obvious. Think about it this way.... nobody confuses the Mona Lisa with a photograph. Michaelangelo's sculptures are not illusionistic. Rembrandt's portraits are strong representations, but I wouldn't call them illusionistic.
As far as drawings go, renaissance master drawings are certainly not illusionistic. Even the carefully rendered, long pose figure drawings from the Beaux Arts type students of the 19th century (which are pretty illusionistic) are not as illusionistic as what some contemporary realists drawings.
So the question is… how is it that 20th century contemporary realists can create these illusionistic drawings and paintings, yet they did not in the past? And does this represent an advancement? I suppose the answer here depends on what your standard is for art. If you think illusion is the goal, then the contemporary artists might be inherently superior. If some other form of representation is your standard, then they are not inherently superior
DOES ILLUSION TRANSCEND REPRESENTATION, OR DOES IT DEVOLVE INTO PURELY VISUAL MIMICRY?
Achieving illusion seems to employ many the methods of traditional drawing, and then some. The "and-then-some" I have in mind is the meticulous and time consuming task of measuring line and observing tone so closely, that one can mimic ones optical perception. I'm not sure whether it is transcending representational drawing, or simply devolving into sheer observation.
If it is transcending representation, then how? What is the difference between representation and illusion that would be transcendent? One way I can think of describing the difference between a representational master drawing and an illusionistic drawing, is that the former was probably done in a few hours, whereas the latter might have taken weeks or months. What is achieved by this investment in time is a progressively more accurate drawing and tonal rendering. But what is the nature of this accuracy?
The accuracy is judged against visual perception. After all, with the sight-size approach, you visually compare one thing to another, with "sameness" being the standard. Achieving this sameness is no small matter, and it seems that some abstract processes are required to construct the drawing, and plan the tonal work, etc. To that degree, striving for the illusion sets up a series of drawing objectives. But it seems that these objectives, with all of their virtuous qualities and abstractness, end up simply serving as a scaffolding for a finishing process of progressively purer and purer observation.
Think about it. What does it mean to take a day or two to accurately measure and draw the cast, and to block out light and dark masses in a general way… only to then spend the next month meticulously toning in the interior one pencil point mark at a time? I cannot see the abstraction in it. If drawing is an abstract system of mark making, such that a drawing never ceases to be abstract… never shifts gears into pure observation... then what is the status of illusionistic drawing? It seems like illusionistic drawing does turn away from drawing system, and becomes pure observation… and it seems like it must do this… because it is measured against a direct comparison to our optical perception of nature.
IS ILLUSION A PROPER LEARNING OBJECTIVE?
I'm conflicted on this question. Obviously, I'm not talking from a vantage point of any kind of mastery of illusion. I'm sitting here struggling. Despite my critical tone, I'm actually finding the process of doing these drawings to be enormously useful in learning to draw better.
Illusion seems to be a good learning objective, in that to create an illusion, one must execute each step to a high degree. Any flaw in the linear drawing will wreak havoc with the later portions of the drawing. Any failure to observe tone well will mean your tonal ranges will be off, and the drawing will not compare to the subject. And so on and so on.
Illusion of this kind is so totally unforgiving, that you must execute the necessary steps flawlessly. That kind of pressure forces you to think and rethink and rethink again all your drawing steps. You are forced to understand these steps, to understand the order in which they are done, and how one steps leads to another… how one step affects another, etc. It's as if illusionistic drawing implies a firm grasp of general drawing knowledge and skill. I think this may be so, but I'm not sure.
The reason it may not be so, is that I can imagine people who are temperamentally suited to spending long periods of time engaged in close visual observation. I can imagine these people as being able to observe nature with a finer and finer scrutiny, and to make endless pencil point marks on paper to record their observations. Of course, it is fanciful to think that any human could simple observe isolated points of tone floating in their visual field. I know that these people must learn many things and execute several preparatory drawing steps before their natural abilities at close visual scrutiny can kick in. But, once it does kick in… are they actually drawing anymore? If drawing is understood as an abstract system of representation, does visual mimicry count as drawing?
These types of questions matter to me because I need to legitimize the time that would be required to produce an illusion. The two cast drawings I've done in the past two weeks have been representational, but not illusionistic. Would spending a month or more on tonal work be worth it. I can think of two possible answers. The first is that it is not worth it. This verdict would derive from the idea that illusion does not transcend representation, but simply devolves into a non-abstract perceptual approach that is devoid of artistic selection.
The other answer would be that it is worth it. This verdict could be based on the presumption that sophisticated tonal work, and the illusion it creates, is an end in itself. However, I don't believe that is illusion is an end in itself. In which case, the only reason I can see why it is worth it would be that pursuing a complete tonal illusion would force me to account for all perceptible reality set before me, and that such a strict and difficult exercise would expand my visual awareness in some way. This actually doesn't sound unreasonable, though I would rather know ahead of time that this was true, as it would something big like that to motivate me spend so much time on apparently mundane tasks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)