Dannon Rhudy on sun 22 aug 10
James said:
An even better ..........found in the typical drawing of a human
face,............
Absent training, most will place the eyes somewhere on the forehead, and
typically too close together. The ears are likewise often too high on the
head, the mouth is much too wide, ... nose is simply a mess....
... case of the drawing of a human face also allows us to largely discount
lack of technical skills as the culprit,
leaving lack of observational skill as prime. Even lacking technical skill=
,
the parts, though perhaps poorly drawn
...... if we were to actually "see" our model, yet they are not.
I've tried to keep the general sense of James' remarks, but did not want to
reprint his entire post, though
it was of great interest to me. In some respects I believe him to be
correct: we do tend to draw the image in our mind,
rather than the image in front of us. A drawing of something as simple as =
a
coffee mug (yeah, yeah, don't start) will
often, with beginning drawing students, be the image in their head, and not
the object in front of them. It takes time
to learn to draw what we see. But I differ with James in this respect:
when I was learning to draw (a painful process, at the time)
I constantly heard the teacher say "you (me and everyone else) don't know
how to see yet, that's why the model is out of
proportion, without romance/reality/whatever. I knew that this was not
true, period. Not in my case. I could see very
clearly what was there, but my eye-hand-brain coordination was not there. M=
y
hands did not know how to draw what I
was seeing. They tried, but it took a great deal of practice to become
adept, at either the human form or face. So I practiced
and it STILL took several months to reach an eye-hand-brain accord. I did
absolutely everything I could think of to reach a
point where I could make the marks needed to produce what I SAW. Proportio=
n
was a struggle, shadow, line, everything would be
off just that bit that made for very peculiar images. Then, in a single
day, I was suddenly able to do what I wanted to do,
to produce the image I wanted to produce. I remember very clearly, it was =
a
Tuesday 8 a.m. class. The teacher was as
startled as I was. I've thought about that quite a bit since, especially
because I've taught drawing now for a number of
years. My experience as a drawing teacher has been much along the same
lines. Many who take drawing classes do not have
the eye-hand-brain connection in the beginning. They have to learn it, and
it's very similar to learning to read. There's
a lot to put together, and then one morning you can read the whole page at =
a
glance- your brain has made the necessary
connections, and from that point on it's just a matter of learning
vocabulary and increasing speed. Learning to draw is
similar in terms of putting together the information needed, plus with
drawing your hands must learn some skills.
It seemed the more puzzling to me, when I was beginning, because I could
walk into the sculpture class and do whatever I
wanted to do, first pop out of the box. Still not clear about that, but
just the way it was. If I could touch it, I
could make it. If there was pen/pencil/brush between hand and paper - a
different story.
I have not taught drawing to children, but I've observed a lot of them and
their drawings. The young ones always have a clear
and specific idea about their drawings, and make them as near to what they
want to draw (a horse, a car, a parent, a friend,
a flower) as they have skill and coordination to do. And they will tell yo=
u
what flower it is, which friend, whose house - they appear to intend to mak=
e
their drawings
as real as they are able to do. Children may be natural "abstracters"
(drawing is always about knowing what to leave out).
But - I think it is because they can't manage to draw with the precision
they'd like, at that young age.
An interesting thread, and viewpoints are bound to vary widely. Plus -
experiences vary, too, and most of us pay attention to
our own experience. Not to say we learn from it....heh heh hehe.
Meanwhile, back to the drawing board - as it were.
regards
Dannon Rhudy
Kathy Forer on mon 23 aug 10
On Aug 22, 2010, at 10:31 PM, Dannon Rhudy wrote:
> when I was learning to draw (a painful process, at the time)
> I constantly heard the teacher say "you (me and everyone else) don't know
> how to see yet, that's why the model is out of
> proportion, without romance/reality/whatever. I knew that this was not
> true, period. Not in my case. I could see very
> clearly what was there, but my eye-hand-brain coordination was not there.=
M=3D
y
> hands did not know how to draw what I
> was seeing. They tried, but it took a great deal of practice to become
> adept, at either the human form or face. So I practiced
> and it STILL took several months to reach an eye-hand-brain accord. I di=
d=3D
> absolutely everything I could think of to reach a
> point where I could make the marks needed to produce what I SAW. Proport=
i=3D
on
> was a struggle, shadow, line, everything would be
> off just that bit that made for very peculiar images. Then, in a single
> day, I was suddenly able to do what I wanted to do,
> to produce the image I wanted to produce.=3D20
The split in the academic drawing realm where I studied was between those w=
h=3D
o taught that we "draw what we know" and those who said we "draw what we se=
e=3D
."=3D20
I partook of both approaches. To the thin aesthete who lectured in chalk, d=
r=3D
awing a foot like the letter L was only natural, a kind of fleshed out stic=
k=3D
figure. Same too with eyes up in the forehead, that's what a child saw whe=
n=3D
looking up at adults. He taught that we draw as we know and the solution i=
s=3D
to learn more, to understand how things fit together, to investigate anato=
m=3D
y as well as the play of light on abstract shapes, cube, sphere and cone, w=
h=3D
ich we would later discover in the body.=3D20
The Rabelasian on the first floor taught us to draw not just with our hands=
a=3D
nd minds but with our arms and entire bodies, feel the skin, the shadows, t=
h=3D
e curves. Drawing was about gesture and expression.=3D20
Another favorite teacher, a cartoonist and musician, taught us to see reall=
y=3D
see and feel both paper and object. We did single contour drawings of the =
m=3D
odel turned in multiple degrees, all in one sheet. Twenty-five minutes of o=
n=3D
e and two minute gesture drawings loosened us up. He taught line and propor=
t=3D
ion as well as hand eye coordination.=3D20
Later classes emphasized the primacy of perception over preconception much =
a=3D
s the third teacher had taught but with less flat linear precision, looser=
,=3D
with dimensional play, background, foreground and everything in between.=
=3D20=3D
The first teacher basically said abstraction is knowledge, erroneous or acc=
u=3D
rate. The second had no room at all for abstraction and the last used abstr=
a=3D
ction as a system to connect and explore vision.=3D20
There are many roads to Rome.=3D20
Kathy Forer
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