Copying from drawings

Ingres, portrait of Pagini

A friend was telling me recently that he wanted to make a copy of a painting. He had reproduction of a Van Gogh that he had found online and intended to use. I told him that I thought copying great art was a wonderful exercise for the learning painter. However I did offer a few caveats. Here is what I told him.

Copying used to be discouraged when I was in art school. I have no idea if it is now, but then, the argument was that it wasn't creative. They were right. However it is still a great learning tool and teaches discipline as well. You will spend a lifetime making your own original art. A short time spent building skills seems useful, even at the expense of making a few pieces that are not original or creative. Creative is not the idea with copying , the idea is to "get inside the artist's head". While there is  value in sketching versions of the masters, making a careful and accurate copy is most instructive for a student.  It requires the closest possible examination of the subject work to be copied. The nuances of handling and line, edge and color (if present) only yield to the observer after careful scrutiny.
But I think, more importantly, the discipline of crafting a reproduction of the greatest fidelity is essential. We live in  times that often value the quick or nearly instant over the carefully wrought. Too many art students like to bang out quick work that allows them to quit on a piece before really digging down into the excellencies that a more finely crafted project would exhume.  I advised my friend that if he is going to make a copy of a masterwork, to make the most accurate copy he can.

In the early 1970's, before I studied in Boston, I did a number of very careful copies.  I copied the artists that in the preceding century had been considered the great draftsmen. I copied Ingres, Rubens, Michelangelo and Holbein, Jean Clouet and Degas. I copied their drawings.

Later, I copied a few paintings in museums, but initially, I copied drawings. Here is why, I could get better reproductions of drawing than of paintings. There were inexpensive books available of the drawings of the masters AND they presented the drawings in nearly the original size.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO COPY, COPY FROM THE ORIGINAL IF YOU CAN, IF NOT, COPY FROM A REPRODUCTION CLOSE TO, OR THE ORIGINAL SIZE OF THE HISTORIC WORK!

This is important, copying a painting six feet across from a reproduction the size of a postcard will give you some information, but not the fineness of handling, edges and line. Drawings reproduced on paper are more like the original  works . I advise that you find monographs of artists drawings rather than working from a computer screen , a drawing reproduced on paper looks more like the original than the backlit version on your computer screen. After doing copies of drawings you may want to do copies of a few paintings,then I recommend you go to the museum and copy from the original.  Some of you may live in places where there are no museums. If that is the case for you, the next best thing to do is to copy from a print.  Finds a high QUALITY print that is similar if not the same size as the original. The museums and online merchandisers sell such things. The niceties I mentioned before appear better if at all in an actual sized reproduction rather than in reduction.

Tracing the image is counterproductive, Measuring a half dozen or so points and marking them on your paper or canvas does seem like a good idea though. That is easy, a particular point in your print might be six inches down from the top and four inches in from the right. Use a ruler and mark a few  points about your version to avoid distortions and heartbreaking corrections later.

Try to work the whole image, at least at first. Few things are more disappointing than discovering a carefully rendered passage is in the wrong place compared to the passage adjoining it.

Work on a quality paper, something that will stand up to erasure. Use quality pencils in a couple of appropriate hardnesses. Get  a kneaded eraser and a Pink Pearl  for ripping out your mistakes. If a line isn't right, tear it out! Do it over.

There is only one "right" there are a billion versions of wrong.

Don't walk away from the project when it is half right, hold yourself to the project as long as it takes. Put it away and return to it again. Pull a tracing of your version and lay it over the original and check your work for accuracy. Pretend you are a forger. A fine copy, finished, will be a great thing to hang on your studio wall for a reminder of the skill you have observed in your artistic hero. A weak copy will not, it will only remind you of the cursory attention  you were willing to spend on the project. You could tape an apology below it, I suppose. Begin that with the phrase,"I was just trying to...."

I think Ingres is a great draftsman to copy. His incisive, elegant and rhythmic line taught me a lot about artfulness and representation. I was able to copy from the originals years later at the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, but I am grateful for the time I spent in my early years copying Ingres drawings from books.

Tonal landscape drawing

A snowy road near Rochester, Vermont

Oh, here I am!  I have been traveling, teaching workshops and always painting. I get e-mail routinely, asking as civilly as possible, "wheres the next post? That makes me feel useful. Here it is.

When last I wrote, I talked about confusing color with value. I see that a lot when I teach. Students add color instead of lowering the value of an object. The shadow side of a green tree becomes greener, not darker in value, the deepest shadows down within the tree become greener still.

I have just finished teaching half a dozen workshops in New England, Mississippi, and in North Carolina. As I taught those, I kept in mind that I wanted to find a way to make the idea easy to grasp for my students. Here is what I think might work.

Many of you have programs on your computer like Photoshop, or photo correction programs that came preloaded into your computer, or installed by your digital camera as part of its software package. There are two adjustments always offered, there are zillions more besides including one that makes your photo look like it was done by Monet, well sort of. But, the one above is important, this slider controls lightness and darkness push the slider one direction it gets darker and the other it gets lighter. This slider is controlling values.

Below is the second important control offered you, this is for saturation, or the amount of color. Like the slider above, if you push it one way the colors become more intense, push it the other way and they become less colored or grave. This slider doesn't make the colors darker or lighter, just more or less colored.

What are halftones?

I posted a Bouguereau (fron artrenewal.org) last night and talked about halftones and their subtlety. Several people in comments wrote that they were unsure just where the halftones were. Let me see if I can explain that. Below is a sphere labeled with the parts of the light. It is taken from a post I wrote in the late 15th century that you can read here.
Most simply understood, the halftones are part of the illuminated side of an object neither in the highlight or in the shadow. Because they are a part of the lights they are part of a family of values (that is degree of lightness or darkness) that are always , always, ALWAYS! lighter than anything in the shadow.

The handling of halftones is one of the niceties of painting where the fine draftsman shows his power. Well understood and handled halftones are a hallmark of a proficient painter. It takes some doing to handle them well, and the naive tendency is to overstate them.

Here is our Bouguereau again, from artrenewal.org. I think I will try to explain this by showing you where the halftones are n0t. I have dropped the head into black and white to simplify this a little bit. Halftones are a part of drawing and thus they remain even when the color is removed.

The little numbered arrows point to some of the shadows on this head. For instance number 6 indicates the mouth, a cavity that the light doesn't illuminate, and 5 points to a shadow cast by the ear. 3 points to the cast shadow alongside and below the nose. All of these being in shadow are DARKER than anything in the lights. The shadows are where the light is not striking the form. That is either the underside of something, a cavity like a nostril, or simply where the form is turned sufficiently away from the light that the light cannot reach it.

REMEMBER, THE LIGHT AND THE SHADOW ARE WHOLLY DIFFERENT WORLDS AND NO VALUE OCCURS IN BOTH!

Above is our girl again. This time the little arrows are pointing to various highlights. These are the brightest areas where the form turns into a position where it, like a mirror, most effectively reflects the light it is receiving out towards the viewer. For instance 4 is the upper part of the chin, 5 is the cartilaginous tip of the nose and so forth. The highlights are the brightest values.

In between the highlights and the shadows is a varied topography created by the close modulation of the values OF THE LIGHT. The swellings and recessions of the form that are illuminated, though less than the highlights, are all halftones and the tell the story of the form as it curves away from the light until it suddenly turns and enters the world of the shadow.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO WORLDS IN THE VALUES, THE WORLD OF THE LIGHTS AND THE WORLD OF THE SHADOWS, AND EVERYTHING IS EITHER IN ONE OR THE OTHER. THERE IS NO OTHER PLACE!


Ok here is the head again, can you find the halftones now?

On sanguine, charcoal and chalk drawing

A Watteau from the National Gallery of Scotland

Dearest Stapleton;
Yesterday I visited a wonderful exhibition of drawings by Watteau at the Royal Academy. The amazing thing is that all these drawings were done with just three colours of chalk, sanguine, white and black, with only a very limited use of graphite is some of his last drawings. However though I have looked in various art suppliers catalogues, I cannot find any chalks for sale. Can you advise me as to what material Watteau and other artists actually used.
I must say how much I enjoy your blog. It is so informative.

Ms. Trixie Pantalot

Oh! Trixie!

Well lets start with the charcoal, I like the Winsor and Newton vine charcoal. I think that which is graded hard the best. The important thing is it must be real charcoal and not a compressed charcoal. The compressed contains wax or other binders to hold it together that affect it's working quality and make it difficult if not impossible to erase. Here is a post I wrote about using charcoal.

Sanguine is a naturally occurring chalk that has a brown-red tone. Conte makes sanguine sticks in various species, here is a link to them ( this link is to Jerrys Artarama and probably other places have the same thing). I believe they are compressed and probably contain some wax, but they work well and I have used them successfully. There may be a boutique maker out there making real organic sanguine sticks from natural deposits, but I don't know of one. Conte even makes a shade called Watteau, that sounds like it ought to work! Lastly, at the bottom of the page are white sticks too, I have used ordinary chalk and that works as well.

You also need to get a proper paper to do this. I can think of three possible choices. The first is ordinary brown"butchers" paper. It comes on a roll and is very inexpensive. It has a nice tone to work on if you are highlighting in white chalk. This is useful for studies for paintings more than for making finished work. Drawings on brown paper can look very nice but are less permanent than my next two suggestions.

Mt first suggestion would be a quality charcoal paper, which usually comes in a package of about 25 sheets. I have always liked the Canson Ingres paper best. It has little raised lines on it because it is chain laid and that gives it a pleasing texture. I believe in the olden days it was sometimes called cartridge paper. Strathmore makes a nice charcoal paper too. Remember if you are highlighting in white chalk you want a toned paper. Gray, buff, blue,tan, there are lots of varieties and you will have to decide what you like best.

The last alternative is pastel paper. That comes in a zillion different weights and colors. I think for this particular type of drawing you wouldn't want the sort that is sanded. Sanded paper is almost like sandpaper it has a fine grit on it's surface.

Watch out for that white chalk by the way, do that last as it doesn't erase well and if it gets mixed with the charcoal it gives an unpleasant opaque gray that will look different than the rest of your drawing, so try to keep the two separate. You will need a couple of kneaded erasers too. I think it best not to spray drawings with fixative as it kills the look of them a little. Sometimes you must, but it sacrifices something of the tonal quality that comes naturally to charcoal and other dry mediums.

Ingres drawing in his painting

OK, lets see if I can tie this thing up. Above is a portrait, in oil this time, by Ingres. Lets note the similarity in the painting to the drawings I have been showing you for the last few days. Here is the head from that portrait below.

Below is the head I posted the other night still wearing its ovoid delineation explanatory line. As you can see the same technologies I have been discussing the last few days are in the head above in paint. The values are suppressed and the painting is a creation primarily of line and not of mass. Ingres painting is a colored drawing. There is more modeling in the painting than in his pure line drawing, but there is still a dominance of line over shading. The sinuous line that defines the forms is superior to the modeling. It is particularly obvious in the hand above.

Ingres has continued the strategies of expressing his form through other methods than modeling. The ribbon like hair above and in the painted portrait express the curvature of the skull, for instance. Notice how the lips are wrapped around the face showing how the forms turn there.

There is no clutter in the lights, and there are no obvious brushstrokes to clutter up his forms. Everything is refined down to clear ovoid shapes. It is an austere refined beauty. It is classical. We are so accustomed to the romantic bold and bravura handling today, most of the artists we revere and who appear in the pages of our contemporary art magazines are romantic, but there is another approach. The crystalline perfection of these formal paintings is irreproachable and they have a purity of vision that can influence our paintings today.

Juxtaposing different values and counterchange

© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com

Here's the first Seago I showed you again. I want to point out to you a design tool that Seago is using in this painting, juxtaposing different values. It is the practice of deliberately relieving objects on top of dark ones and and dark shapes on top of bright ones. This gives a "snap" and visual excitement to the piece. Look at this detail;

Sometimes an artist wil modify the value os an object so that it is light as it passes infront of a dark object and light as it passes in front of a dark object. This is called counterchange. It is a means of juxtaposing your values. See how Seago has arranged this passage so that the trunk of the important tree sits in front of the dark grouping of trees behind it. That makes it jump. A little further up the trunk is dark and the landscape is now light behind it. Then several of the branches above that are counterchanged against where the trunk itself becomes dark.

Here is that little grouping of houses out to the right of the trees, look how they are juxtaposed against the dark copse of trees behind them.Then there is a dark in front of them. Below is another Seago that is full of the same techniques.

© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com

Every shape in this painting is silhouetted against its opposite value. But notice another thing, if you squint at this painting, there is really just one big light, which cover 3/4 of the painting. The darks are arranged in a decorative pattern over that large light. It is almost like one of those cut out black paper silhouette portraits, of which our colonial ancestors were so fond. Here is a detail from the center of this painting.

The trunk is counterchanged it is light against the darks behind it, but as it rises into the sky it becomes light against the sky.Seago is using stacked lights and darks or value juxtaposition in the picture in many places. For instance the branches on the left side of the tree are dark against the bright sky, while those on the right side of the trunk are light against the darks behind them. The front wall of the house is bright, behind it the roof is dark and the sky behind that is light again.

Now I know you are still spinning from the confrontation with these new ideas, counterchange and stacking or juxtaposing values.. These are important because they have an enormous implication about the artistic thought process.

HE MADE THINGS DARK OR BRIGHT IN VALUE, BASED ON WHAT FURTHERED HIS DESIGN, RATHER THAN HOW THEY ACTUALLY APPEARED IN FRONT OF HIM!

That is an absolutely huge idea. Now think about that, even his values are subject to the machinery of design. All of the effort you put in as a student to learn to record values accurately, while essential and useful, is only the default way of doing things. Values are, like any other element in painting, just another tool for the designer.

Now that is one of the things that thrills me most about landscape painting. I don't mean to say that portrait painters or figure painters don't have these opportunities, but landscape painters do have the leeway to do more of these things because of the nature of the genre.

Pity the tyro landscape painter, fresh from still life class or naively clutching a promising photograph who tries to compete with a designer who will ruthlessly use his values just as he pleases, rather than respecting the capricious arrangements of styleless nature.

If you don't learn how to arrange the landscapes values yourself, that man will eat your lunch, every, single, goddamn, day.

Seago images: Edward Seago the landscape art by James W. Reid published by Sothebys 1991


I am going to do another critique of a readers image, so please send me an image of something you have made, I will probably choose a landscape, but not necessarily, lets see what you've got. You can send it to me at stapletonkearns@gmail.com. I will photoshop your signature off of the piece and I will tell no one whose work I am critiquing.

Critique your art?

I need a day to get out ahead of the blog on the Charleston painting demo and so I came up with this idea!

Here it is: If you will e-mail me a jpeg of one of your paintings I will critique it in an upcoming post. I will of course photoshop your name off of it and I won't tell the other readers whose it is. I promise, digitally. I don't know whether anyone will send me an image or if I will be deluged with images, but I could perhaps do several if there is enough interest. I think this would be a great teaching device. My e-mail address is

stapletonkearns@gmail.com

Please put the word critique in the subject bar rather than free Rolex or one of those curious enlargement messages I seem to be getting so many of these days.

The image above is a close up of a Vermeer, "The art of painting". I am currently wearing a pair of socks just like the ones he has on in the picture. Lets notice another thing, his right hand is resting on a mahl stick.

I don't know how many of you know about, or use a mahl stick. When I first arrived in Rockport in 1983 they were so obscure that I was occasionally referred to as that artist with the stick. Times change, perhaps everyone knows what a mahl stick is now, but I will explain for you who do not. The idea is that the artist can rest his painting hand on the stick rather than putting the heel of his hand down in the wet paint. It gives a nice steady platform for doing detailed work out in the middle of a painting. I have several, but the one I use most is just an ordinary dowel from the lumber yard. Mine is 1//2 inch in diameter and 48" long. I use it a lot. I also have a screw together one I keep in my box for outdoors. It really helps sometimes, like a bridge on the pool table.

Incidentally, It looks to me as if Vermeer is starting at one point on his canvas and working out from that. His palette is probably hidden in the other hand holding the base of the stick. We don't see it because artists in those days often used quite small palettes rather than the big kidney shaped palettes that became popular later. I don't think you can see it in this reproduction, but Vermeer has a white drawing, probably chalk indicating the big outlines of his model on the slightly toned canvas.

So send me something to crit. I am excited to see what you send,and again, I wont let ANYBODY know whose art I am critiquing........Stape
image; artrenewal.org

Herding sheep

One of the things that I was first taught upon my arrival at the Fenway studios in the mid 1970's was how sheep are herded. Ives Gammell passed on to me a way of doing things with this analogy. This is an important idea so listen up.

When you herd sheep, you don't go get the first sheep in the flock, pick him up and carry him all the way to the barn and then return for the next .

Nor do you go get the last sheep in the flock, carry him all the way to the barn and then go back for the next one. What you do is this.

YOU LOOK FOR THE FURTHEST BACK STRAGGLER,
AND BRING HIM UP TILL HE IS EVEN WITH THE REST OF THE FLOCK.
THEN YOU RETURN FOR
THE NEXT FURTHEST BACK STRAGGLER
AND BRING HIM UP TILL HE IS EVEN WITH THE REST OF THE FLOCK.

Because you don't take that furthest back straggler all the way to the barn, and you bring him forward so he is again moving along with the rest of the flock, the whole flock moves along as a unit. You, as the shepherd are always looking for that furthest back straggler.

Here's how that applies to drawing or painting. When I am working on a piece I am always looking for my furthest back straggler, that is the part of my painting that is the least finished or most wrong. I work on that, I don't try to finish that area and then go on and finish the next area. I only work on it until it is as resolved as the rest of my painting, and then I look for my next furthest back straggler. This keeps the whole painting moving along as a unit, and it keeps me from having to connect different finished areas and finding they don't relate to one another.

As I bring each straggler forward to join the flock a new and often heretofore invisible straggler pops out to be advanced to the herd as well.The herding sheep method also helps prevent me from losing my UNITY OF EFFECT to the creation of lots of separate smaller images sewn together on one canvas.

The whole painting marches towards completion as a flock with no part being finished or ignored until it is completed. There are fine painters who work outwards from a single point to their completed picture ( like Richard Schmid who is a whole lot smarter than me ) and even some who have painted from left to right. I sometimes do these things myself. However as a basic working philosophy "herding sheep" is an excellent method. It is my default way of working and is certainly best for the less experienced practitioner.

More about style and observation

image:artrenewal.org.

Go to the museum and notice that most of the paintings look very different from photography. Granted some are very realistic looking, particularly the French academics of the second half of the 19th century. But even those have a "drawn" look that is non photographic.

A British painter, David Hockney has written a book entitled "Secret Knowledge" that attempts to explain away the drawing abilities of the great masters of painting as being actually the products of camera obscuras. A camera obscura is a lens and box machine known from the renaissance that will project an image onto paper allowing it to be copied. It is essentially a camera without film.This is a case of wishful thinking on the part of a man who cannot draw well himself who would like to prove that no one else could draw either. But this is part of a larger mistaken idea as well. That is the idea of painting as a window.
If you look at the painting above it would seem obvious that it is not a traced drawing from a projected image.
Here is is an Ingres (image;artrenewal.org) that is a good example to explain with. At a glance it looks photographic, but upon closer inspection what it is, is convincing. In fact the more you study it the more abstract and otherworldly it becomes.
None of the great historic paintings in the museum could be mistaken for vision. Hence

A PAINTING SHOULD NOT BE MISTAKEN FOR A WINDOW. A VIEW OUT OF A WINDOW IS STYLELESS. VISION IS STYLELESS.

Vermeer probably had and used one and there is evidence to support that claim. However there is simply no way a camera obscura explains away Rubens, William Blake or Michelangelo.

The "modern art spokesmen would like us to believe that the artist was merely a second rate camera and made unnecessary by the development of photography. They want us to think that our historic traditional painting is only about its subject matter. They believe that what they call "modern" art is the result of the artist liberated from the demands of representation and free to carry out the"real" business of art

An artists must be more than a meat camera, he must filter vision through his own perceptions and intentions and produce a thing that is more than transcription.
To do this the artist applies to his painting a "treatment". That may include artful coloring, use of form, design, narrative and other schemes to elevate his creations from journalistic to poetic. All of these things involve decision making. If you aren't thinking you aren't making art.

Drawing, and that D which is three:

Image:artrenewal.org
There is an additional quality a drawing can have, that is form. Form is shown or implied within the outline and gives to the subject the illusion of roundedness or volume. I think form is less instinctual than outline as it seems to be developed later in our drawings.

We have binocular vision, that is we see like the old stereoscope views from two separated points, giving us depth perception. If you have only one working eye, like Maxfield Parrish you don’t. We see in three dimensions but when we draw, we must work in two .We are going to have to start fooling people. When you are fooling people you are employing art. Artifice was the Greek god of deception, not of sincerity. We want to give the illusion of that D which is three on that flat surface Lets examine some of the ploys we will use to do it

. The most convincing form is installed rather than observed in our drawings. We use what is commonly called shading. I laid out in an earlier post the bed bug line and the parts of the light. A sphere would be the result of the effective use of the parts of the light and a dirty disk the result of their misapplication. That’s why I have so stressed the suppression of the halftones in an earlier post. Imposing systematic statements of the parts of the light, more calculated than their general appearance requires decision making. When you start thinking, you are no longer a “meat camera”, you become an artist. The “tuning” of the different relationships of the parts of the light is one example of this.

Another way to enhance the perception of form is the invention of cast shadow to explain a contour and more commonly the omission of a cast shadow to reveal the form. Artists routinely remove cast shadows to avoid chopping up the forms. It is surprising how the viewer seldom misses them.

Some times in figure drawing and very occasionally in landscape an artist uses a trick called “jumping the light”. That is moving the fullness of a form, say a large muscle in a figure, out into the light by moving the shadow away from the light source in order to present the form either more clearly or to present a greater amount of a figure in the light. We will talk more about this in a later post, much later. I mention it now as an example of the manipulations artists take to increase the illusion of volume.

Another manipulation is at the outline itself, the overlapping of the different parts of the outline to describe the interweaving of the different muscles in a figure. Describing the intersections of the limbs in a tree or the recession of the hills in a landscape is another time artists stress this overlapping.

Artists often exaggerate the “plumping” up of of objects to enhance the feeling of roundness. Rubens is an example of this. Bad people with whom you should never associate deride the work of this great artist as “fat women” imagining that Rubens was trying to titillate them and missing, because they prefer another body type. These people are seeing only the subject matter and missing the art. Rubens was actually reveling in the ability to express form and volume consummately well. This was one of the many things that made him so great. He was my favorite painter, some days anyways. Expressing form by decision making rather than by observation is as I said, before art. If you are only appreciating the nineteenth centurys' art because it is more naturalistic looking I urge you to discover Peter Rubens. There is an awful lot to enjoy there that is bawdy, vibrant and deliriously exuberant. His lines writhe and cavort about marvelously. His simple yet deliciously clever step-by-step means of presenting the things in his paintings is a great lesson on how a line drawing is transformed into a painting. Rubens is an artist’s artist. Tomorrow I will return to the subject of form again.

More about copying drawings

image: .www.artrenewalcenter.org
Above is a drawing by William Bouguereau, 19th century French academic painter, this guy could REALLY draw! An amazing artist and until recently little seen in museums, now seeing a restoration to the position in art history he truly deserves. I will do a post on him soon.

I promised I would return to the subject of copying drawings and I will do that now. You must obtain a clear reproduction in something like the actual size of the original drawing. I would suggest starting with an Ingres or Michelangelo, however there are many great draftsmen whose work will do. You must first find a suitable drawing. either in a book or printed out from online, perhaps from the Art Renewal Centers' web sites' wonderful collection. Tape it to a drawing board next to a sheet of good quality drawing paper. I like Aquabee Deluxe and Canson Ingres but there are many good papers out there. Do not use a cheaper poorly made paper! You don't want it's surface failing when you are hours into a project.

First mark off on your drawing paper an outline the size of the drawing to be copied. Find a point with a ruler at the top of the drawing and place a tic mark there, find two or three landmarks in the figure directly below your first mark. Then find and mark another couple of dimensions with your ruler corresponding to other important points on the drawing and you now have a sort of map with which to begin.

Starting very , very lightly with a pencil, begin to imitate the drawing on your paper. You must do this very softly, as you will erase it a few times before you are happy with it.All of that erasing is why a good quality paper is important, it has to be able to take the beating. Work the entire drawing out like a ghost before you darken any line. You can find more landmarks in the drawing with your ruler as you go, that way you can see if things you are drawing are falling into their right places in relation to one another. The point of this exercise is accuracy,so try to make as perfect a copy as you can. Obtaining the last 20% of the accuracy in your copy will teach you more than the first 80%. Leave nothing knowingly wrong on this drawing, or any other for that matter. Every thing in art should be as right as you can make it.

Art must be "A" work or its not art. Art wont shine your shoes, fuel your car, or feed your cat. therefore:

ART HAS NO REASON TO EXIST, OTHER THAN THAT IT BE WELL MADE.

Drawing,light and shadow.

Here is a drawing by Pierre-Paul Prodhon, a French artist who lived from 1758 until 1823. The image is courtesy of www.artrenewal.org . whose online museum is something you should be aware of, as it is a great resource. I am routinely indebted to them for images without which much of this tutorial would not be possible.

This beautiful figure is a good example in which to clearly observe an artist finding the shadow edge or our "bed bug line". His shadow edge is easy to see and the two worlds, the light and the shadow are carefully divided. I am now going to write something you will have to read a few times to understand. The first time I heard it, I thought it was gibberish;

THE DARKEST DARK IN THE LIGHTS IS ALWAYS LIGHTER THAN THE LIGHTEST LIGHT IN THE DARKS.

conversely

THE LIGHTEST LIGHT IN THE DARKS IS ALWAYS DARKER THAN THE DARKEST DARK IN THE LIGHTS.

There are two separate worlds with no note occurring in both. When we draw, we are "sorting " the values into the two great camps, light and shadow. Everything belongs to one or the other. Either the light strikes it or it doesn't.

No matter how dark some gradation in the halftone may appear, it is never as low in value as anything on the shadow side of our drawing. When you get this overly dark halftone it is because you are comparing one part of the halftone against another, rather than looking at the object in its entirety. This is what causes a problem called over modeling. More on that in the future.

Routinely when I teach I will explain this to students who "get" the concept. Then when I join them at their easel, I will place the heel of my brush at some random point on their canvas and ask them "is this in the light, or is this in the shadow?" They are sort of dumbfounded and will look down at their feet and say they don't know, or that its sort of in both, or neither. Every time your brush or pencil touches that canvas you need to know whether that mark you are making is in the light or if it is in the shadow. Every time. If you place one note from the light into the shadow the illusion of form vanishes.


PS. the reason I am finishing the aforementioned charcoal drawing from left to right is, because that way ( since I am right handed) the heel of my hand is to the right of, and not sitting on and smearing the delicate area of drawing I have just completed.

The bedbug line

Above you see a sphere showing the PARTS OF THE LIGHT. They are;

1) The half tone, that's the value (degree of light to dark) of the object as it appears in the light.

2) The point on the sphere that faces most towards the light source and reflects that light to us is the highlight.

3) The shadow edge, which is where the light no longer hits the surface of the object, this is the bedbug line, I will explain that in a moment.

4) The shadow has a minor, lighter area within it called the reflected light.

5) The sphere throws a shadow onto the surface behind it called the cast shadow.

It is through this organized presentation of the light hitting an object, that the form of that object is represented. We have no other way of representing an object other than by a description of the light hitting it. Most of drawing is either measuring the proportions of one part of an object as related to another, or presenting the form through a representation of its values.
I intend to spend some time describing the different parts of the light I have labeled above. Today I shall deal with the most important. That is the BED BUG LINE. Your drawing book doesn't call it that, usually it is referred to as the shadow edge. My teacher R.H.Ives Gammell (more about him later) used that whimsical title to teach me a valuable lesson that I have never forgotten. Here it is:

A bed bug walking across the surface of the sphere steps boldly from the light into the shadow. That's it!

That means our tiny bug is EITHER IN THE LIGHT, OR HE IS IN THE SHADOW. Why that is very important is because it means that the two worlds are totally separate . No value occurs in both. My entry of Saturday January 31st shows a value scale and you might want to take a look at that. The instant you take a note from the light part of the sphere and introduce it into the shadow side of the sphere the illusion of form vanishes. This is the most important thing you can know about representing light. It sounds obvious and easy, however in practice it is one of the places where most students run into problems with their drawing. I will join them at their easel and touch the heel of a brush to some random point on their drawing and ask them, is this in the light or is this in the shadow? They often don't know and they try to explain how it's dark but it's in the light or it's somehow not in either. Every time your brush (or pencil , charcoal , whatever) hits the canvas you MUST know whether it is in the light or the shadow. Its one or the other every time.

Here's another photo of the Boston Public garden drawing progressing. I am pretty much working from left to right on it. Tell you why tomorrow, along with more on the parts of the light.

Some thoughts on drawing

image :www.artrenewal.org

I believe I will take up the subject of drawing for a while. At left you see a drawing by the great French draftsman Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres 1780-1867. Ingres has been held up by traditional painters for a long time as being just about as good a draftsman as a man can be. He did a lot of these portrait drawings . I knew I needed to begin writing about the subject of drawing by presenting one.
When I speak of drawing, often people will think of drawing and painting as being different things. I think of a painting as a colored drawing, a mass drawing more than a line drawing but a drawing just the same. If you can draw well you can learn to paint in a season. If you want to paint better, grow your drawing.
Over the years I have heard many students say, "Oh. I can draw, I just need to learn how to paint". I look at their drawings and they are distorted, badly proportioned, hesitant and flat.. For a long time I was puzzled, Why did they imagine they could draw so well, when their drawings were so amateurish?
What I figured out was this. Each of us has a list of qualities we think a drawing should possess.. For someone like Ingres that checklist was extremely long. For these students I referred to, the list was quite short. They compared their drawing to their list of desirable qualities and it had all the features they required. It looked just fine to them.They knew of no qualities their drawings lacked. This also explains why my mom liked my drawings so well when I was a kid.
From this we can gain a lesson.

THE ABILITY TO JUDGE A DRAWING PROCEEDS THE ABILITY TO MAKE ONE.

I mean by this, that you are unlikely to make a better drawing than you know how . I suppose that sounds cryptic, but if you ponder that for a moment, I think you will see what I mean.
You need to expand that checklist of excellencies against which you are comparing your drawings. The best way to do that is by studying the drawings of the masters, artists like Raphael, Michelangelo, Rubens, Ingres, Holbein, and Watteau. These are all artists who were masters of drawing and whose works may be readily found in widely available books. You need to know very well what a great drawing looks like, in order to make a better one yourself.
The best way to study these drawings is to copy them. I know this doesn't sound real creative, but I suggest it as a training act and not as an art making exercise. I copied many drawings as a student and it helped a lot. Most of you will roll your eyes and go on without giving this a second thought. Still, I have made myself responsible for telling you by what means excellence may be obtained, and this is how it has been done successfully in the past. If you are an art student, I strongly advise you to consider doing some copying of great figure drawings. People get really good at doing things by going to lengths to learn, that others will not. You might consider taking some time to build your skills rather than concentrating solely on the production of art. Skills building is much neglected in today's art instruction in favor of self expressive creativity, OK it aint art, but if it helps you make better paintings it's good to do, right? I aim this advice particularly at you who are students within an atelier or art school. You have the time and the leisure to do this and you will learn more from doing some of this than anything else. It is actually kind of fun, and you will end up with a really nice looking reproduction of a great drawing to put on your refrigerator. In tomorrows post I will begin to tell you how to go about doing it. I believe I will close with another Ingres drawing I have studied them many times and they are like beautiful and familiar old
friends to me now...... image: www.artrenewal.org