In much of recent postings I find this the most satisfactory. A neat
definition as well.
On 29/8/06 04:39, "David Lovegrove." <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi, This is my first posting to Drawing Research, and I would like to throw
> in my two cents worth regarding this topic.
> A definition of sorts came to me one day after thinking about a Photography
> teacher (a bit of a radical) who had categorically told me that drawing was
> dead as there was no place for it any more since photography had taken over!
> I was incensed by this idea, being a person totally devoted to the art of
> drawing. I didnt have a quick answer for him ( I might have called him an
> idiot though!).
> The definition that later came to me was this-
>
> "A photograph is like lifting a print from reality.
> A drawing is like lifting a print from the mind's impression of reality".
>
> As a definition of drawing it is certainly not perfect, but I think that it
> gets at what drawing really is - a way of making concrete and shareable the
> experience of aspects of the drawers reality.
> My early training was at a very classical art school in Sydney, where we
> drew with pencil and charcoal from plaster casts of Roman, Greek and
> Renaissance busts and flayed figures.
> I did this for three years as well as lots of painting and of course lots of
> nude and draped figure studies.
> Such a curriculum of training must seem absurd to many, yet what I
> experienced by its practice was very unexpected.
> After a solid year of drawing these plaster casts and nudes I found that I
> started to experience what I can only describe as an untouched area of my
> brain being opened up and used. I had purposely stopped most reading and
> literate activity in that first year so as to try to gain (at the age of 35)
> a more visual mind. Drawing for up to 8 hrs a day, sometimes 7 days a week,
> I found that my verbal and literate activity started to shutdown somewhat.
> What replaced this activity was a sort of virtual room in my mind in which
> any thing that I looked at was modelled in a blob of golden floating matter
> which took on the form of the object I looked at. I found that I could then
> consciously move that 'form' around in my mind and inspect it from all angles.
> Classical training has always emphasised the first importance of the artist
> being able to sense 'form' and this was my experience of the development of
> this ability.
> Contrary to the perception held by some that classical drawing training is
> synonymous with the 'academic' tradition, I found that myself and most of my
> fellow students and teachers were all very open minded and experimental
> drawers, 'drawn' to using these traditional skills for expressing our own
> very contemporary experiences of life NOW.
> (It is an interesting subject worthy of further discussion that many of the
> seminal masters of modern art had had several years classical training
> before they took flight in their unique and poetic personal directions.)
> It was long considered (at least in the 20th century) that this type of
> training was a means to an end, not the end in itself. Of course some people
> do get stuck just there, producing technically beautiful but aesthetically
> sterile works. This does not at all have to be the case, and I believe that
> it purely personal choice.
>
> Whilst at the school I became friends a quadraplegic artist. He asked me to
> teach him the classical tradition, and for two years I went to his studio
> for two days a week and he drew plaster casts and nudes with a pencil and
> brush in his mouth! He never asked for me to go easy on him technically, and
> i didn't. One day while we were drawing a female nude model I did a quick
> line drawing for him to explain some point. He remarked, half jokingly, "its
> easy enough for you!".
> I decided to have a go at doing a drawing his way, so I stood behind him,
> with this long pencil on the end of an arrow shaft, and drew the nude. My
> jaw muscles just about went into a spasm!
> The drawing I produced, wobbly line and all, still did justice to the model
> , and I showed my friend. He laughed when he saw it and told me that he
> hated me even more! What we both realized from this experience was that the
> drawer cultivates the mind first and foremost, through constant practice and
> experiment and focus and liberated play.
> If your mind can draw then you can express that drawing with anything,
> drawing with the hand (or both hands at once), with the mouth or the foot,
> or with a stick in the sand, scissors cutting paper, or with a digitizing
> pen and tablet drawing into a virtual world.
>
> As a final two cents (four all together), regarding the idea that "black is
> not a colour". At the classical art school we began figure painting using a
> limited pallette that seems to date back to at least the ancient Romans.
> We used Red, Yellow, White and Black to mix all the flesh tones.
> The preferred black was Ivory Black, which is actually a very dark green.
> Blacks seem to all be either warm (tending to red) or cool (tending to
> blue/green). This is the palette used by Rubens and Hals and Rembrandt.
> So black produces beautiful flesh shadows etc.
> Many artists now are only tuned into the saturated colours, but the
> traditional idea was that a tasteful balance of colour saturation and
> desaturation (greyed colours) were essential elements of picture compostion.
> Not that I totally agree with that. An artist has to be true to their
> inspiration work by work, and should do what they sense the work is
> demanding, regardless of the rules and traditions of others.
>
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