My Graduate students tend to freak-out in our first class when I hand out sticks of charcoal and large sheets of newsprint.
The activity of drawing seems insultingly stupid, miles below their intellectual capabilities, and an overall waste of time. As I strike a pose and give a first warm up activity, the class looks around self-consciously. At that moment just about everyone would sign a petition that states drawing is too rinky-dink for graduate level study.
I start with drawing -- and stick with it -- for three very sound reasons:
1. It's an effective jump-start into Visual Thinking.
2. Drawing becomes a tangible metaphor for Rediscovery.
3. Sustained exercises in drawing demonstrate the meaning of Practice.
To be a successful media designer, one needs to have the ability to work out ideas on paper, using symbolic code of images. Some concepts are simply too dense to be effectively bound by words. Many constructs become so complex that sketches are required to express the relationships between such diverse elements as movement, time, audio, sequence, space and style. To be a good designer, you must know how to draw. The aim is not to be Michelangelo: but rather to have the capability of using simple drawings when the need arises.
If something is always present, we take it for granted letting it become invisible to us. It's trite to note that, today, we live in a sophisticated media ecology far more complex than past generations. However, how can we gauge how deeply we understand this pervasive mediated environment? AHow could a fish know that it lives in water?
You will find, I believe, that drawing is a humbling way to observe a situational companionship with our fish friend. Drawing helps us see how we see. An on a more abstract level, the discipline of drawing reminds us that as media designers we must train ourselves to perceive the cultural surround even while we are living in it.
High-level students tend to think that if they read something, or sit through a lecture about it, then they know that something. For many areas, this is true enough. However there are some areas in which knowledge can only come through active doing -- through practice . Media Designers require this practical knowledge. For example, you could read endlessly about playing the piano, but be completely ineffectual the first time you sit at a keyboard. You get the point. Mastery is achieved through practice.
Please plunge in.
While drawing instruction is probably best delivered in studio class, I'll attempt to provide a series of quick drawing projects suitable for site visitors to undertake on their own, using a sketchbook -- or even the back of an envelope.
The drawing instruction that accompanies the exercises is based largely on a paperback volume by Bert Dodson, titled "Keys to Drawing".
Assignment One:
(uncropped and unscaled. lower top. Maybe bring in sides" -- the green at right might want to stay?)
(i) Use a pencil and sketch book to make your own drawing based on the photograph above. Give yourself around 1 minute.
Reflections after drawing ...
- the goal here was simply to loosen up the hand. How did it feel?
- did you experience anxiety with this plunge into drawing? Were you thrown back to either traumatic or positive memories from childhood?
- did you think to add a frame around the figure?
- why do we tell ourselves that a "good" drawing is a realistic one? This is a tough assignment, especially as a starting place. That's because most people are extremely exacting when the undertake a representational drawing. But note that your expectations of how "realistic" a drawing needs to be is likely quite different when leafing through a magazine, where illustrations are often abstract and impressionistic.
- drawing from a two-dimensional image source is a lot different (and lots-easier) than drawing from a live model.
You may find yourself employing your eyes in an unfamiliar way - one that is at once active and analytical. The tips that follow should a special kind of vision used in drawing.
Assignment Two:
(to be cropped: bring in left side?)
Here is medium-close up of your handsome model. The camera's point of view has been chosen to give you an unusual view.
Do another 60 second drawing. But as you proceed, try using these distinct steps:
(i) Look at the subject and isolate one shape in it. Study this for a few seconds.
(ii) Hold that shape in your mind.
(iii) Draw the shape while it is fresh in memory.
Reflections after drawing......
- was it easier and did you feel more relaxed when given discrete steps to follow? Often when a difficult task is broken down into a step-by-step workflow, the imposing challenge becomes easier to approach.
- did you find yourself "correcting" lines that went astray? The "look, hold, draw" becomes "look, hold, draw, compare, judge".
- were you aware of yourself "seeing" in a different way?
each tip in own box
(Kate please take out purple caption "Restating". I have this book and canrescan if necessary. Same with other examples from Dodson's book)
Caption:
 |
|
About restating , Bert Dodson writes: "Most of us have a negative attitude about our own mistakes. To a draughtsman, such an attitude is not helpful and will need to be reshaped. "Trial and error are essential in drawing. You make lines and compare those to the contours of your subject. Distortions will no doubt occur, and some of these you will want to correct and adjust as you go. You could erase these lines , but it is usually better to leave them for now and simply draw the more accurate lines alongside... "There are two advantages to such restating: (1) you don't waste time erasing that would be better spent observing; (2) the drawing actually looks more alive and energetic with all those restatements." courtesy: Keys to Drawing , Bert Dodson, North Light Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1990. (KL add url) |
Assignment Three:
Contour drawing is a classic exercise in all art schools. It is a great way to get your eye and hand working as partners.
The term "contour" refers to any edge or boundary you can observe in your subject. Often it will be an outside edge that separates what you are looking at from the background. Sometimes an interior element will give you an contour line - for example, the separation below an arm from the shirt, or the creases in the palm of the hand.
(i) Start by putting your pencil (or other drawing implement) onto a fresh sheet of drawing paper.
(ii) Select a single point anywhere upon the contour of the arm. Focus on this point.
(iii) Start to draw but do not look down again for the full 60 seconds. Not even once! .You will be working blind because you cannot refer to your drawing while it is being made. Rather, keep your eye and the point of your pencil perfectly synchronized - don't let one get ahead of the other. Your eye should creep every so slowly over the contour. Try to make your hand register the tiniest change of direction, moving exactly at the same speed and direction as the eye is moving.
(Kate to crop for thin wide frame. Keep image as big as we can -- large enough so that the edges of the fingers are clear.)
Reflections after drawing......
- did you experience your drawing hand as an "eye" that was in constant and intimate touch with the subject? Sculptors report that when they draw the pencil tip is tracing the subject's three dimensions.
- chances are the completed drawing looks kind of weird. As you traced around the end of the fingers, line direction probably became distorted. With blind contour drawings, it's easy to get "off-course" in terms of the proportions or positions within the overall drawing. But what you give up in correctness of "shape" is made up for in the clarity and authority of the "line", no?
Assignment Four:
This exercise is about the power of memory. It has two parts.
(i) Take about a minute to draw a baseball cap from your memory . Do not click on the box below until you have completed the first drawing.
(ii) Click on the box that says, "Click for cap photos". Choose which of the four photographs is closest to the point of view you took in your drawing from memory. Study the "real" hat for a while and then give yourself another 60 seconds to sketch the hat again.
(Kate - build blank frame containing phrase "Draw first then click for cap photos" , which leads to a pop-up phot of baseball cap seen from four pov's. Arrange two above two? Note morey pattern: how to fix. Images Sources are on CD sent to you as hat1 etc)
caption (Kate reminder that info in captions is all to go into the smaller font we use for captions, but not into italics. You'll delete all these pink notes to yourself):
Reflections after drawing......
- Did you notice how drawing from memory can get you in trouble? This is because our minds tend to pull symbolic representations of the object we are trying to remember rather than memories of the specific objects. These are simplified, iconic images that our brains file away which obliterate our ability to "imagine" the object.
Assignment Five:
(i) hold your drawing pencil, pen or marker loosely as opposed to the tight, precise way you used it in the previous assignment.
(ii) choose two of the images provided below after studying them to see which has, in your estimation, more implied action or more dynamic balance. The goal of this exercise is to capture the inner structure of your subject.
(iii) give yourself no more than 30 seconds to make both drawings. Work with fast, expressive strokes. Scribble the essence of the subject.
(Kate. If you have time, look through your free image bank resources to grab 4 photos that will give a range of interesting subjects for ss to draw. Maybe a dancer? racing horse? city sky line? classic still life)
Reflections after drawing......
- harder to do than you anticipated, right? I studied figure drawing for a year at the Arts Student League in New York. Every session included gesture drawings and I never got over feeling rushed and klutzy. However, there is no drill better in training one to see the deep shapes and dynamic forces within a subject. Recognizing and capturing such gestural poses is far more important in drawing than the placement of a specific line or detail.
 |
|
Kate: can you get in and clean this up? take out page
number, "gestrue Drawing, the grey at right edge? Caption: Four Gesture Drawings Note how scribbly, quickly-drawn lines are used to define the posture, weight and balance in these figure drawings. Gesture drawings are also a helpful technique in studying the prime shapes in a still-life or landscape. courtesy: Keys to Drawing , Bert Dodson, North Light Books, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1990. |
( place 2 pix side by side. Maybe use drop shadow? Place letters (a) and (b) Kate first of thise is Hayle_example. It is staring to artifact badly check out the original on CD I gave you. Can you help it? Second example I could not get to import. You can see what it looks like in the word doc. Its titled bridgman_example. Don't know what is going on here.)
(a)
(
Two famous drawing teachers use different approaches in demonstrating how to look for shapes hidden inside the human form.
(a) For 40 years, Robert Beverly Hale taught artistic anatomy at the Arts Students League in New York City, where he used the drawings by the Renaissance Masters as his text. Here the Albrecht Durer drawing has red constructions lines revealing the landmarks on this side view of a skull, including proportions and the buried form of a rectangle.
Courtesy: "Master Class in Figure Drawing", Robert Beverly Hale, Watson-Guptill, NY, 1985.
(b) George Bridgman taught at the Art Students' League for 30 years. His method was built on a system of constructive anatomy with an emphasis on wedging, passing and locking geometric forms.
Courtesy: "Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing From Life", George Bridgman, Wings Books, NY, 1992.
My own teacher, Michael Burban, had this splendid pensee about the practice of studying anatomy to learn what's happening under the skin:
"First you draw what you see.
Then you draw what you know.
Finally, you
know what you see."
Assignment Six:
If you've worked your way through the previous five assignments, you will be ready for this sixth and last assignment. But be prepared for an extreme workout. There is no drawing challenge bigger than to draw your own self-portrait, working from a mirror .
As you will see, the attempt to catch a "likeness" can be defeated by the smallest imprecision in scale or placement. Thus a self-portrait is a test of one's accuracy in seeing shapes and placing them relative to each other.
Help is on the way. The measuring techniques that follow will help you gain precision through some extremely simple yet extremely effective measuring tools:
(i) find a good place to work: sitting at a table, the drawing surface before you, a mirror positioned so you can see head and shoulders. The mirror should be about 3 or 4 feet away from you. Without making any significant movement, you should be able to look up to see your image and look down to see the paper,
(ii) study your image and choose a "measuring unit" that is to become an important tool. For example lets say (in reference to the photo below) the "unit" is the distance from where the glasses cross the bridge of the nose to its tip = "nose-length". Find such a gauge as you look at your reflection.
(Kate: this is cropped big time -- see the Word version. Just a head here, with down to second button on shirt. Please add a bright yellow line right onto the photo, running from bridge of glasses (over nose) on a diagonal to tip of the nose. Read copy and you will see what is going on here. Tweak source photo in photoshop to make shadows less intent?)
(iii) extend your arm towards the mirror, holding a pencil in one hand. Lock your elbow.
(iv) sight along the pencil, using its point to mark one end of your "measuring unit" and the top of our thumb to mark the other end. (Note in our example that in order to mark the length of the "nose-length", I would need to cock my wrist to the right, because the head is cocked.)
(v) keep elbow locked and thumb in place as you reposition your arm to compare other lengths. Can you find shapes with the same length as your measuring unit? (above, width of the lens in the glasses; length from line formed by lips to bottom of chin)? How many units does it take to measure your head's overall width or length? (above, 3 and ½ for width; 4 and 2/3 for length)
(v) now you start to draw. Begin by putting down a line that will represent your "measuring unit". Make this any size you want, but keep in mind that you want to leave enough room so your head and shoulders will fit on the page. This first picture element will determine where and how big everything else will be.
(vi) lay-out the overall geography of your self-portrait. Use very light lines to "rough-in" the position and size of the landmarks you have measured via the unit you choose. You are good as long as everything is proportioned correctly when compared to what you drew in (v). As you lay out tentative lines, you may find yourself needing to lift your arm and make quick comparisons between many shapes.
(vii) resist the temptation to add detail to any of the dominant shapes in your drawing like eyes, lips, hairline, etc. Spend at least 10 minutes making comparative measurements. Double-check your positions. Restate as necessary.
(vii) proceed finally into a detailed rendering of the features on your face. Try to think of them as shapes and use the look, hold and draw steps that were suggested in the first assignment.
Here are four illustrations that Dodson provides to show how this comparative measuring yields knowledge you can put to work in your drawing.
Reflections after drawing......
- Drawing any face brings up a situation where one's memory gets in the way. It's no wonder. Starting as a child, you conditioned yourself by making faces that start with a circle. Growing up, you were further indoctrinated by looking at (maybe copying?) cartoon images with those super big eyes and balloon noses.
- Can a friend recognize the drawing as you? Hmmm? Bravo if they see any likeness at all.
- Congratulate yourself. The task you just took on is as difficult as as driving a Formula One racing car or conducing an orchestra.
Use the locked-elbow/pencil measure to compare one distance within your view of the subject with other distances within the composition. Can you find two or three contours that are of equal lengths?
(Kate, its almost midnight and I am getting up at 4:45 for flight. Can't find the pix of myself holding up a pencil -- this sample to show foreshadwoing. Leave it blank unless its in the files I gave you. I am suspecting it is somewhere else and it will take some time to find it.)
Caption:
Comparative measurement is particularly useful when your subject is foreshortened. If you start to draw this image, your mind may scream, "Whoa! That guy's hand can't be bigger than his entire head!".
It is said that through years of practice, an artist can stand 30 feet from a wall, set their eyes on the mid-point and then walk forward and, with confidence, mark a spot that will be within 1 " of the measured center.
Back in the Renaissance, artists started using grids to increase the accuracy of their drawings. You can do the same thing.
The awesome power of a grid resides in its ability to help one see shapes as opposed to things. The fixed spatial coordinates make it easy to see and then place forms in an accurate, consistent way.
In this assignment you will superimpose a grid of squares over a source image.
Click here for a •••• PDF file with step-by-step directions. The entire project will likely require an hour of time. Here is a quick overview of what the project involves.
Step 1. Find a photograph of yourself.
Step 2. Xerox a copy of the photograph.
Step 3. Draw a square grid directly onto the photo's copy.
Step 4. Lay-out 4 identical, empty grids on fresh paper
Step 5. Draw 4 different versions of your gridded portrait.
This gallery of student work will give you a preview of the results. Observe how the different drawing media - drawing pencils to colored pencils to gray markers - produce a remarkably wide expressive range.
Before we move on from drawing, I want to observe how much more there is to learn than the rudimentary techniques introduced above. Dodson's book on drawing (as well as many, many others) spends a lot of time exploring related drawing techniques and topics such as....
Mapping -- breaking down lights and shadows into well-defined shapes, as if they were territories on a map.
Modeling - the artist uses light and shadow to create the illusion of "roundness". This is called modeling and there are a number of different techniques that can be used.
Illusions of Texture - another rich topic in which you can study the masters of drawing to see how they have used strokes, patterns and contrast to achieve the sense of a surface's roughness or smoothness.
Good Stuff: I have a big library on books about drawing and there are many good ones. But this clear, simple and beautifully illustrated volume is certainly one of the best. The topics above and below are developed in Dodson's book. Keys to Drawing, Bert Dodson, North Light, an imprint of F&W Publications, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1990.
Managing Edges - normally, the word "edge" conveys something sharp and well defined, like the edge of a tabletop. When doing line drawings, however, an edge becomes any boundary where two shapes meet. Edges can be clearly delineated or they may be vaguely implied.
Light Sources and Light Quality -a world unto itself. How one chooses to use light in a drawing can have huge impact upon the mood evoked by the piece.
Human Anatomy - did you know that a standing person is eight heads high? Also, the measurement of "heads" fall at significant points (the groin is 4 heads down from the top, the navel is 3 and the nipples are 2.) Knowledge of bones and muscle is hugely valuable in learning to draw from life.
Drawing and Imagination - this site's quick exploration of drawing might give you the sense that the highest goal is to achieve representational accuracy. Quite the contrary, the paramount quality of a drawing is the insight it brings to the mind of the viewer. Serious study of drawing involves the same sorts of right brain activity that McKim identifies as "Visual Thinking".