Being Able to Think

Sketch from life of my son watching TV

"Drawing, like so many other skills, is a matter of being able to think of several things at once."

 --Robert Beverly Hale

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Harnessing Horses

Yesterday I was in the mood for doing a figure sketch. This gentleman was taken from this WetCanvas reference library photo. I was intrigued by his level of concentration. He appears to be a little less than comfortable playing out on the street.

Doing this figure proved to be every bit as hard as I thought that it would be. Much like Hale and others have said doing great artwork is "driving all the horses at once." You must get all the little pieces to fit together...so light and shade, values, perspective, anatomy, tone, etc must all be working together. To draw convincingly you must be able to master each of these areas and then in one piece, handle all of them well at the same time. Therein lies the tricky part. I found it hard to remember all the caution points, stay with my idea for how it should look, and keeping checking the reference in the meantime!

Anyway, there is some improvement over my last full-length figure, although I'm driven all the more to practice, practice, practice.

Sweeping out the Woodshop

Here's the "finished" effort on the woodworker. That's in quotes because there is alot more work to be done on this to make it right, but enough is enough. For instance, the proportions are all wrong, more so as you go down the body! I had fun with the clothing in parts and then lost interest in other parts - all of which is clear. But for this, I was just gunning for getting in some graphite time. All this work in colored pencil has changed my graphite habits - I am constantly sharpening my pencil, as is necessary with CPs. I just get annoyed with a dull tip and the lack of control that I experience with it.

As July ends I am considering what to do in August...certainly another master...but which one? Also I need to decide whether or not to continue with the Hale's Masters series or wrap it up in a few more posts. If I continued on with it, I would likely spend some time going over his detail in the anatomy section - which bones are important and why. That is tempting for me, but maybe I'm just geeking out on it. Is anyone else interested in that sort of thing?

Two Dollar Books and Other Finds

Last night my husband and I were given free babysitting by some very generous friends of ours (our 3 + their 4 = 7 kids, with the oldest being 5!) Being the consummate nerds that we are, we went to two bookstores, a restaurant and a coffee shop. Honestly, we had a fabulous time. We came home with 14 new books! The real buying came when we hit the $2 clearance racks - in case you were curious. I must be honest, the majority of the books were mine. I've stocked myself up rather nicely for some art history reading!

Onto to Hale and his Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters. The next chapter is on artistic anatomy. Hale recommends that you find a medical supply store and buy some bones. Then, you can study them, discover where the bones and muscles meet and then you too can draw like the greats - from your imagination. While I have no trouble believing that he is right, I don't actually envision myself getting around to buying bones!

A few weeks ago though, I found a great alternative...posemaniacs. First, I didn't really find this, I saw this on someone else's blog - I think it was Dan over at emptyeasel, although I couldn't find it on a search this afternoon. If someone else saw it and knows where it is, let me know and I will give proper credit. The site is in Japanese and I think geared towards the manga crowd, but nonetheless it is very useful. For the last few weeks I have been doing 30 second poses to warm myself up for a drawing session. On other days I've just concentrated on the daily pose. They have a computer generated bones and muscle person (i.e. no skin). There is the daily pose, a gallery where you can choose poses for a certain amount of time, recent poses, and some other areas for customization. Each figure can be spun around so you can choose your viewpoint.

I am very excited to have found this resource, above is one of my sketches. If you are in the habit, or want to be, of drawing accurate figures, take a look.

Drawing from the Masters #6

This is my next installment in the Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters series.

Hale's chapter five is entitled "Position, Thrust, or Direction." He defines these terms and discusses the different uses of thrust and movement in drawing. This chapter is filled with tremendous drawings by famous men, each handling the concepts in their own way. Many of the drawings have examples of the artist figuring out the best way to place limbs or draperies.

I was quite taken with this drawing of Botticelli (go look at it, that's why I didn't include an image today). After reading Hale, here's what I see:

• Botticelli has conceived simple masses for each of the parts of the body.


• He's given general lighting characteristics to show the forms of those masses.


• He then went over the body with drapery to reinforce more of the form.


• The drapery also gives excitement or a bit of "dance" to the drawing - emphasizing what he wants to capture.


• He does this without the aid of a model.


• He does all of this consistently - to masterful effect.

Seeing drawings like those in this book, reading Hale talk about hard work, knowledge and perseverance, well, it all just makes me think da Vinci's thoughts after him...namely, that the best artist is the scientist who fully knows and understands all the parts and whole of his subject and that I want to be that scientist/artist.

Drawing from the Masters #5

This is my working draft for the Parrish/Rockwell project this month. The soldier is from a Marine Homecoming cover that Rockwell did. The window is inspired from some train windows that Rockwell drew on a troop train. The lighting will be inspired by Parrish, so it is different than on the original soldier. The window or framing idea is also common to Parrish. I am still playing with ideas for what to put out the window. Nice trees are found in both illustrator's works. Certainly there will be blue sky, but what else? I thought about an oak tree and then calling it "The Mighty Oak", but the soldier looked rather young to be called a mighty oak. Any ideas?

Now a bit from Hale, which dovetails in nicely with all this consideration of lighting. He's discussing light and planes in chapter 3. He says "the contrast of light and dark is one of the most important devices we have for creating the illusion of shape...Be careful not to put a black line or blotch in the highlight. Your line or blotch usually represents an unimportant detail; but it will be in extreme contrast with the highlight and will seem like one of the most important elements in the picture."

Hale seems to repeatedly stress these two themes:

• drawing takes practice (he constantly uses phrases like "hundreds of times" when refering to doing exercises)
• artists don't draw what they see, they draw what they want you to see

Both of these points can be controversial, but in a great measure I think both are very true and part of what makes this book such an encouragement to me.

Drawing from the Masters #4

This is another Norman Rockwell copy. This time of a Boy Scout print called A Guiding Hand. I'm just doing the heads for now. I still would really like to take a Rockwell image and change the lighting to more Parrish-like dramatic lighting. (Do people apply the term tenebrist to Parrish? Perhaps not, but the drama of tenebrism is there.) This isn't the image for that, but I am still learning about Rockwell while doing it though. I sincerely doubt that I am going to be able to pull off the tongue pressed against the upper lip in concentration, but it is fun to try.

Now for a little wisdom from Hale. He is discussing a drawing from Durer, the one on the cover of Hale's book. He mentions that Durer shaded both the side plane of the nose and the side plane of the head. He says that most beginners will shade the side plane of the nose but forget the head. Hale stresses the importance of putting "first things first." That is, "Heads are more important than noses. Hands are more important than fingers." That is good advice - it is very easy to get caught in the details and miss the forest for the trees. On many occasions I have found myself doing just that and ending up with a few good branches lost in a tangle.

Finally, one of the major points that I learned last time I read this book: "The ear is well drawn. Get a medical anatomy book; study the helix and the antihelix, the tragus and the antitragus; and you will be able to draw ears for the rest of your life."

That being able to draw ears for the rest of my life bit really appealed to me. So, in January, I studied how Sargent did ears. Granted, it wasn't an anatomy book that I studied. But, just taking the time to really study how Sargent portrayed ears on a number of faces, gave me a great deal of confidence. I no longer have the fear that I used to have about them.

Drawing from the Masters #3

Above is my finished copy of a Norman Rockwell print about Summer. I took it from a 3x3 image in a book I have, Norman Rockwell Illustrator by Arthur Guptill. My version was done on 11x14 paper.

Of course, Rockwell is detailed. His drawings and painting are full of (seemingly)effortless detail - that he can wave around such skill all over his canvas so easily makes for greater impact to his work. So often the humor is in the details, something Rockwell combined to a charming degree. I am keen to do more copies, just to get more of his sense of detail and emphasis.

This all dovetails nicely with what I am reading in Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters by Hale. Chapter two is called Line. Hale then proceeds through all types of lines an artist encounters...where plane meets plane, color meets color, tone meets tone, etc. He talks about using contour lines in figures to define shape:

It is too bad that human beings are not striped like zebras, because then it would be very easy to explain the shape of the nude. But since they are not, the artist is forever seeking and even inventing such lines in his search for the illusion of form. He invents all kinds of lines he cannot see at all. This, I assure you, takes a thorough knowledge of the elements of drawing...

It is said that as soon as you can run contour lines perfectly in any direction over any part of the body, you have really learned to draw.

Today I had the morning off (thanks to my husband) and went out for a troll through the art shop. Afterwards I sketched a statue outside of Borders books. It began to rain, so I only got in a few minutes. While I was drawing, anticipating the rain, I kept thinking about much better it would be if I had the skill to know where to invent lines or emphasize lines on a figure. If I had more anatomical understanding, which Hale encourages, I could be quicker in getting information down. So I guess I'm back to practice, practice...

Drawing from the Masters #2

Just a quickie today.

A most inspiring quote from Hale:

"You must realize there is no royal road to drawing. It is practice, practice all the way. So get your pad of paper and start drawing simple lines. You will find it very hard to make a really straight line, and harder to make a vertical than a horizontal. Try drawing a perfect circle. Draw a few thousand and they will get perceptibly better. Above all, don't get discouraged. It is said that only the divine Raphael reached circular perfection." (Hale, p. 14--15)

The images are courtesy of my adorable husband, who awoke this morning early, planned the shopping list for the July 4th cookout, went to the store and got it all, and came home with "get well" flowers for me. All this after making dinner last night. He's a star and he's taken :-).

Off to practice, practice, practice!

Drawing from the Masters #1

This is the first in a series of posts I'm going to do this month based on Robert Beverly Hale's Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters. Essentially, I plan to read through the book again (yes, it is that good) and post about hints, suggestions, or observations he makes.

The first chapter is very fundamental, it's entitled "Learning to Draw." He basically discusses the technique of breaking objects into simpler shapes. For example, think of a head as a sphere sitting on a cylinder, rather than just plunging into drawing all the details at once. He then encourages you practice drawing as many lines, circles, cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc as you can. This is a very common technique used in art instruction books.

The other most common early technique, somewhat at odds with Hale's suggestions, is that championed by Nicolaides and others, that of gesture drawing. Basically just doing a scribbling technique to block in quickly a gesture or movement.

Both of these techniques are useful in different ways. I use both and I imagine most artists do.

Reading this through this time I was struck with how much planning is inherent in the "breaking down into simple shapes" method. Particularly in the works that Hale looks at, artists spent a long time planning where light would fall, how it would fall, where people and things would be placed. This was all to be sure that when they got painting all the problems of structure were laid out. I certainly try and do a quick value sketch before beginning something, but I may need to think more about actually planning out the work more. Some more rigorous planning may help me make decisions about what to simplify, what to include, what to exclude, and what to emphasize.

After reading I spent a few minutes imagining a scene in my mind (me trimming my tree in the garden - as opposed to the reality of lying in bed with a cold). I then tried to block in shapes like I had seen in Hale's Cambiaso sketches (Here's an example, wish I had time to find others). Above you see the effort. Not a fine work of art, but honestly, a vast improvement over my usual "without reference" works.