Chapter 6 Drawing

Chapter 6 Drawing Learning Objectives - Describe how artists use drawing as an important tool for recording events and developing ideas. - Distinguish the use of drawings to record ideas, as preliminary studies, and as independent works of art. - Discuss drawing tools and techniques used with dry and liquid media. - Explain the role of drawing in comics and graphic novels. - Discuss contemporary drawing techniques and technologies. Introduction Drawing - An immediate and accessible way to communicate through imagery - Convey's an artist's imaginings Henry Moore's shelter drawings - Londoners sheltering from Nazi bombing raids - Valuable record of events where cameras could not function - Moore named an Official War Artist The Drawing Process - Children draw often before reading or writing, but it is a learned process. - The meaning of drawing - To pull, push, or drag a marking tool across a surface to leave a line or mark - Sketchbooks - For developing ideas or taking notes - da Vinci’s Facial Proportions of a Man in Profile - Director/producer Guillermo del Toro’s pages detailing Pan’s Labyrinth - Receptive and Projective drawing - Receptive drawing - attempts to capture the physical appearance of something before us - Mary Cassatt (captured family group on public transportation) - Projective drawing - Drawing something that only exists in our minds - Martin Ramirez, Untitled no. 111 - A train passing through an impossible tunnel - Work based on imagination - Drawing and the Creative process - Many artists regard drawing as deeply important - Some artists present exceptional ability as children, but some who had to develop it include: - Paul Cezanne - Vincent van Gogh > Carpenter compared to Old Man with His Head in His Hands, made two years later - Good drawing can appear deceptively simple - Vincent Van Gogh: Mastering drawing - Believed he has to master drawing before allowing himself to use color - Struggled with drawing - Did not wish to achieve photographic accuracy - Drawing from life - Admired more simple styles of drawing, preferring Japanese style Purposes of Drawing - Serves three functions: - Notation, sketch, or record of something seen, remembered, or imagined - Study or preparation for another, usually larger and more complex work - As an end in itself, a complete work of art - Michelangelo's Studies - Reclining Male Nude for painting of the figure on the Sistine Chapel celining - Careful drawing form observation - Repetition of parts needing further study - Picasso's studies for Guernica - Forty-five studies are preserved - Gestural lines convey work's essence - Preliminary sketches not generally considered finished pieces - Treasured for intrinsic beauty of process - Cartoon - Full-size drawing made as a guide for a large work in another medium - Often used for fresco painting, mosaic, or tapestry Tools and Techniques - Lines Hatching - Parallel lines suggesting shadows or volumes - Cross-hatching, seen in Preacher - Contour hatching - Bartolomeo Passarotti Used all three methods - Simple hatching on standing figure - Contour hatching on upper side of bulging arm - Cross-hatching on darker areas - Printmakers use all three types of hatching to suggest mass and shadow - Paper Smooth surface or surface with tooth - Rough grain that gives texture - Georges Seurat, L'Echo - Toothy paper - Dry Media - Include pencil, charcoal, Conte crayon, and pastel - Varying degrees of hardness - Controls darkness and line quality - The softer, the darker - States of Mind: The Farewells - Boccioni's variety of tools and techniques exhibited - Charcoal - Dark passages drawn quickly - Not all particles bind to the surface (may be set with a thin fixative varnish to prevent smudgiung - Wide range of values - Wija Celmins, Web #5 - Conte crayon - Graphite mixed with clay - Resists smudging with similar variation of charcoal - Wax crayons avoided by serious artists - Georges Seurat, L'Echo - Pastels - Similar characteristics to natural chalk - Mostly pigment with little binding material - Do not allow much detail - Rosalba Carriera's sensitivity of medium - Edgar Degas' constructed compositions showing casual, fleeting glimpses of everyday life - Liquid Media - Include black/brown inks, washes of ink (thinned with water), felt- and fiber-tipped marker pens - Hokusai, Tuning the Samisen - Elegance of line created by control over a responsive brush - Same brush used for writing and drawing - Rembrant van Rijn, Elizer and Rebecca at the Well - Compositional arrangement for possible painting - Lightened shade using white gouache, an opaque watercolor - Nancy Spero, Peace - Smudged ink creates an aura of exuberant, impulsive force - William Kentridge - Creates drawings, offers as finished works - Drawing for "Lulu - Used both wet and dry medium over pages of obsolete dictionary - Represents faded authority Comics and Graphic Novels - Comics - Sequential art forms based on drawing - Culmination of development through ancient Egyptian murals, medieval tapestries, and print series in the 1730s - Featured in newspapers - Little Nemo in Slumberland - More serious in recent years - Love and Rockets - Los Angeles-based Gilbert Hernandez and brothers - Long-lining comics - Gang life, love and social issues in their community Graphic novels - Book-length story lines - Growing acceptance - Emily Carroll, All Along the Wall - Scanned pen drawings, altered in Photoshop - Richard McGuire - Hand-drawn stories - Here - Tells story of one person’s life - Interactive version on computer or tablet Contemporary Approaches - Drawing in combination with other media - Julie Mehrte, Back to Gondwanaland - Swatches of cut paper along with drawn ink lines - Shapes suggest the impersonal public spaces of today's mass-produced world Christine Hiebert, Reconnaissance - Lines made directly on the walls with blue tape normally used by painters to mask negative spaces - Resemble drawn lines - Ingrid Calame, #334 - Colored pencil drawing from rubbings taken in an abandoned steel plant in NY and the Los Angeles river - Small number of artists routinely employ digital screen-based drawing techniques - Carla Gannis, The Selfie Drawings - Self-portrait manipulated - Added text or drawing - Added layers or color - Cropped or duplicated More technology to come