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 drawing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drawing. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Drawing, craft vs. art
I had heard a Pafa instructor refer to printmaking as the "craft extension of drawing". Clearly, the inclusion of the world "craft" was meant to convey lesser status and significance. Of course, we do notice that there is a lot of process involved in printmaking, and we notice that this process lends a certain look to printed material. Wood cuts often have the "wood cut" look... and etchings, with their fine lines and such are said to look like etchings. Furthermore, when we approach printmaking, it seems important to understand the medium, because the medium is part of our creative process, and adds much to the final affect.
But is it any different for drawing? Is there any artistic medium that does not impart some process, and therefore some "look" on the finished product. Mediums such as charcoal, conte, or pastel certainly have a look to them, and their use (in practice) seems to have matured to the point where one can say, "That's a typical charcoal drawing", or "That's a well done pastel drawing".... all of which are recognition NOT of the drawing, but of the medium itself. To that extent, how are they different from the the printmaker's reliance on process? There is plenty of process and technique involved in using charcoal, despite the fact that instructors seem to view it as a foregone conclusion that one can intuitively use charcoal to it's optimal effect.
So, where is the drawing medium that doesn't have process... or "craft extension" to it? Where is the medium that doesn't reveal itself in the finished image, such that the viewer could never know what it was made from, or what "type of drawing" it was?
A simple Number-Two pencil seems to be a likely candidate for simplicity, in as much as it simply creates a thin grey line. Because the medium gives so little, it would seem that the artist has to invent all the affects. Surely this is a "pure" drawing medium. The same might be said for an ink pen. But the rub here is that the artist, in being forced to invent so much with line, will reveal that he was working with a linear tool. Further, the image will reveal this linear tool, either by the scarcity of masses, or by masses composed of the dense accumulation of line, which is itself a technique.
There is NO drawing without a drawing medium, and all mediums have craft element... a drawing identity.
But is it any different for drawing? Is there any artistic medium that does not impart some process, and therefore some "look" on the finished product. Mediums such as charcoal, conte, or pastel certainly have a look to them, and their use (in practice) seems to have matured to the point where one can say, "That's a typical charcoal drawing", or "That's a well done pastel drawing".... all of which are recognition NOT of the drawing, but of the medium itself. To that extent, how are they different from the the printmaker's reliance on process? There is plenty of process and technique involved in using charcoal, despite the fact that instructors seem to view it as a foregone conclusion that one can intuitively use charcoal to it's optimal effect.
So, where is the drawing medium that doesn't have process... or "craft extension" to it? Where is the medium that doesn't reveal itself in the finished image, such that the viewer could never know what it was made from, or what "type of drawing" it was?
A simple Number-Two pencil seems to be a likely candidate for simplicity, in as much as it simply creates a thin grey line. Because the medium gives so little, it would seem that the artist has to invent all the affects. Surely this is a "pure" drawing medium. The same might be said for an ink pen. But the rub here is that the artist, in being forced to invent so much with line, will reveal that he was working with a linear tool. Further, the image will reveal this linear tool, either by the scarcity of masses, or by masses composed of the dense accumulation of line, which is itself a technique.
There is NO drawing without a drawing medium, and all mediums have craft element... a drawing identity.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
What is classical drawing?
People speak of classical drawing (or classical painting) as if it were something definite. Art schools offer classes in drawing the figure, portrait, still life, and landscape... with the emphasis on drawing things as they appear. Those contemporary artists who call themselves classical realists assert that they produce classical drawings, and that they teach classical drawing methods. In addition to this, when people say they want to learn to draw, they probably have in mind some traditional notion of drawing whereby their drawings are realistic renderings. But what exactly is classical drawing?
First of all, let's suppose that classical drawing really does describe something definite, and that it is our job to figure it out. Let's begin by considering what classical drawing might look like. Upon hearing the term, we might be put in mind of the many drawings we might have seen in books or museum that show accurate renderings of figures and faces and objects, usually with a elegance or beauty of line and tone that is missing from modern and contemporary art. On the other hand, if we look carefully, we'll see that these drawings can be quite different from each other ways. But leaving these differences aside, what is the nature of their perceived similarities... and are these similarities the classical element we're looking for? Maybe... but let's consider another question.
Can we locate classical drawing in art history, and if so, which period would it belong to? A likely suspect would be the drawing of the French neoclassical artist, such as Ingres, David, or Prud'hon. But given the long history of art, you would think that maybe we're leaving some people out by only looking at neoclassicism. What of Michaelangelo, or Rembrandt, or Durer... artists who worked in different historical periods. Holding up neoclassicism as the defining reference for classical drawing seems inadequate.
Part of the problem here is the varied usages (and thus ambiguous meaning) of the term classical. The term is thrown around a lot, and applied to a broad variety of experiences, where it typically reduces to some idea of something beautiful, or traditional, or old fashioned, or elegant, or non-modern, etc. Perhaps the term classical is simply another one of those terms floating around our mental space that has long since been ripped from it's historical moorings and fixed meaning, and has been subject to definition through usage.
The problem with definition through usage is not that a word will take on multiple definitions that are context dependent. After all, many words have multiple definitions that have evolved over time. The problem is that even within a specific meaning, the usage of the word doesn't refer to the same thing. This is the case with the term classical, as we have seen above. The word become ambiguous. This makes it less useful, as we have to unpack it's meaning each time we hear it. We have to figure out what the person saying it means by it, and often what they mean when they say classical can vary greatly. For this reason, it is worth getting to the root of the word classical, and reconstructing what is meant by it historically. Perhaps the historical meaning will seen to have lost it's authority over time, but maybe not. In either case, it is illuminating to consider.
The term classical is traditionally meant to refer to Greek and Roman culture. In the context of this discussion, we will simply refer to Greek art. Our knowledge of Greek drawing is very slight, as little of it survives. Greek art focused more on architecture and sculpture than on drawing and painting. If the meaning of classical drawing is not rooted in examples from the classical period, then where does it come from?
The idea of classical drawing does not derive from a historical period nor from the work from any one historical period or from a combination of works taken from one or more of these periods. It is not synonymous with the Ancient Greeks, or the Renaissance Italians, or the Dutch Masters, or the French Neo-classicists, or with any group... though depending on who you ask, they may have one or the other group in mind, based on their personal preference. This is the case with the aforementioned contemporary classical realists, who define classical drawing by pointing to French neoclassicism.
The only way to consider classical drawing as a definite thing is to not define it in reference to artists, periods, or examples... but rather to define it abstractly by reference to the classical view of art. The classical view of art (as originated by the Greeks) is that of imitation. Art imitates life. This imitation takes the form of the art object. The art object is not the thing in nature being imitated, but rather a translation of it from the visual awareness (of the artist) to the specific medium the artist uses. The medium can be drawing, painting, or sculpture... and the materials can be as varied as charcoal, graphite, oil, watercolor, clay, marble, etc. Clearly then, the artist does not literally imitate nature, but instead uses his awareness of the visual properties of nature to fashion his materials into a representation.
Of particular note in the sentence above is the phrase "awareness of visual properties". This awareness is something more than just being able to see the thing we seek to represent. The awareness has to be formalized into some form of knowledge, even if very slightly, because human consciousness is not capable of directly grasping the continuous and infinite details of nature. All human apprehension relies on constructing models in our minds to account for the boundless details of raw nature. These models can be complex or very naive. But they exist at every level.
The artist who professes to clear his mind as a precondition to making his art, cannot literally do so. After all, he must still make decisions on size of the art, the point of view, the material, etc. And as the work progresses, he must work in some kind of order... working on one part of the art, and then another, and so on... and if he steps back to critique his work, he no doubt drags ideas into his process. The only way to literally clear one's mind of ideas while making art is to be bounded by nothing, not even presumptions about objects in space, in which case the art object will bear no resemblance. Some people do proceed this way, but they do not generate representations.
Knowledge is required NOT because we require knowledge to see things, but because we need knowledge to make representations of what we see. This is what classical means at it's most basic. Any and all knowledge and skill that goes to representing nature by way of visual abstractions can be considered classical in a general sense.
First of all, let's suppose that classical drawing really does describe something definite, and that it is our job to figure it out. Let's begin by considering what classical drawing might look like. Upon hearing the term, we might be put in mind of the many drawings we might have seen in books or museum that show accurate renderings of figures and faces and objects, usually with a elegance or beauty of line and tone that is missing from modern and contemporary art. On the other hand, if we look carefully, we'll see that these drawings can be quite different from each other ways. But leaving these differences aside, what is the nature of their perceived similarities... and are these similarities the classical element we're looking for? Maybe... but let's consider another question.
Can we locate classical drawing in art history, and if so, which period would it belong to? A likely suspect would be the drawing of the French neoclassical artist, such as Ingres, David, or Prud'hon. But given the long history of art, you would think that maybe we're leaving some people out by only looking at neoclassicism. What of Michaelangelo, or Rembrandt, or Durer... artists who worked in different historical periods. Holding up neoclassicism as the defining reference for classical drawing seems inadequate.
Part of the problem here is the varied usages (and thus ambiguous meaning) of the term classical. The term is thrown around a lot, and applied to a broad variety of experiences, where it typically reduces to some idea of something beautiful, or traditional, or old fashioned, or elegant, or non-modern, etc. Perhaps the term classical is simply another one of those terms floating around our mental space that has long since been ripped from it's historical moorings and fixed meaning, and has been subject to definition through usage.
The problem with definition through usage is not that a word will take on multiple definitions that are context dependent. After all, many words have multiple definitions that have evolved over time. The problem is that even within a specific meaning, the usage of the word doesn't refer to the same thing. This is the case with the term classical, as we have seen above. The word become ambiguous. This makes it less useful, as we have to unpack it's meaning each time we hear it. We have to figure out what the person saying it means by it, and often what they mean when they say classical can vary greatly. For this reason, it is worth getting to the root of the word classical, and reconstructing what is meant by it historically. Perhaps the historical meaning will seen to have lost it's authority over time, but maybe not. In either case, it is illuminating to consider.
The term classical is traditionally meant to refer to Greek and Roman culture. In the context of this discussion, we will simply refer to Greek art. Our knowledge of Greek drawing is very slight, as little of it survives. Greek art focused more on architecture and sculpture than on drawing and painting. If the meaning of classical drawing is not rooted in examples from the classical period, then where does it come from?
The idea of classical drawing does not derive from a historical period nor from the work from any one historical period or from a combination of works taken from one or more of these periods. It is not synonymous with the Ancient Greeks, or the Renaissance Italians, or the Dutch Masters, or the French Neo-classicists, or with any group... though depending on who you ask, they may have one or the other group in mind, based on their personal preference. This is the case with the aforementioned contemporary classical realists, who define classical drawing by pointing to French neoclassicism.
The only way to consider classical drawing as a definite thing is to not define it in reference to artists, periods, or examples... but rather to define it abstractly by reference to the classical view of art. The classical view of art (as originated by the Greeks) is that of imitation. Art imitates life. This imitation takes the form of the art object. The art object is not the thing in nature being imitated, but rather a translation of it from the visual awareness (of the artist) to the specific medium the artist uses. The medium can be drawing, painting, or sculpture... and the materials can be as varied as charcoal, graphite, oil, watercolor, clay, marble, etc. Clearly then, the artist does not literally imitate nature, but instead uses his awareness of the visual properties of nature to fashion his materials into a representation.
Of particular note in the sentence above is the phrase "awareness of visual properties". This awareness is something more than just being able to see the thing we seek to represent. The awareness has to be formalized into some form of knowledge, even if very slightly, because human consciousness is not capable of directly grasping the continuous and infinite details of nature. All human apprehension relies on constructing models in our minds to account for the boundless details of raw nature. These models can be complex or very naive. But they exist at every level.
The artist who professes to clear his mind as a precondition to making his art, cannot literally do so. After all, he must still make decisions on size of the art, the point of view, the material, etc. And as the work progresses, he must work in some kind of order... working on one part of the art, and then another, and so on... and if he steps back to critique his work, he no doubt drags ideas into his process. The only way to literally clear one's mind of ideas while making art is to be bounded by nothing, not even presumptions about objects in space, in which case the art object will bear no resemblance. Some people do proceed this way, but they do not generate representations.
Knowledge is required NOT because we require knowledge to see things, but because we need knowledge to make representations of what we see. This is what classical means at it's most basic. Any and all knowledge and skill that goes to representing nature by way of visual abstractions can be considered classical in a general sense.
Monday, March 21, 2011
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.
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