Caravaggio and That Up-Side-Down Thing

Up-Side-Down drawing is counter-intuitive. It’s crazy. It’s crazier than you think. If I ask you, a beginning drawing student, to draw the complex figures in this Caravaggio painting, you’ll give me a blank stare that says “are you kidding!”  Too many bodies, too many limbs, hands, faces…and all that anatomy and all that overlapping…no way. [...]

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André Carrilho and the Mythic Window to the Soul

André Carrilho, in his late 30’s, is a caricaturist of the highest order. He’s Portuguese, lives in Lisbon, where he’s a national treasure.  His work frequently appears in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.  His daring is breathtaking.  There are no clichés in his work.  Every drawing I’ve ever seen by him has made me [...]

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The Art of Caricature: Try Teaching That!

I’ll be teaching a 5-week course on The Art of Caricature this summer at the Evanston Art Center.  The class will be held on Thursday evenings from 7 – 9 p.m.,  starting June 14.  Due to an email glitch, the class is not listed in the printed summer catalog, but it will be listed online [...]

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Georgia O’Keefe and Jeremy Irons

When I was starting out as an artist I didn’t think of myself as a great fan of Georgia O’Keefe but my friends must have thought I was, because for my birthday I once got the same Georgia O’Keefe book from two different people.  Two copies of the same book, the large format one with [...]

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Life Drawing–Stabilo and Water

The Stabilo pencil is aquarellable.  That means water-soluble.  After I have some lines down, I like to make them bleed by running a water-loaded brush along them.  In that process, the brush will pick up some pigment, allowing me to continue sketching with a very pale wet line.  If I go over or through those [...]

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Faces from Stalingrad

An excellent source of  subject matter for drawing is the DVD.  You can watch a movie, stop it at any frame and make studies.  I find it particularly interesting to draw faces in this way because I can stop the frame at a certain angle or expressions.  Documentaries are best for drawing, I think, because [...]

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Life Drawing: Neck Meets Jaw

The discussion in the previous post (2.8.11) finds ample illustrations in “real life.” Here are some of my own life drawings that show the model displaying the neck-meets-jaw angle. Notice that this requires a foreshortening of the face, with the chin being prominent; the nose seen as a triangle (from underneath); the bridge of the [...]

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Neck Meets Jaw

We like drawing the face looking straight at us.  It’s easy that way because all the features are aligned symmetrically so that as we draw, we can orient ourselves without getting lost.  But a full frontal view is limited in its expressive possibilities.  We all know from our everyday interactions with people that people tilt [...]

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Facefame

Blame it on Lincoln’s beard. Just five weeks ago, on November 24 to be exact, I was reading the NYtimes online in my usual sloppy, skimming, let’s-get-this-over-with way.    I’ve never liked reading the paper, this or any other.  I’ve always known that you’re supposed to keep up with the news, but there was always something [...]

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Cartooning for insight and persuasion

Cartooning looks ease.  The only way it can be effective is if you make it look easy.  Like magic:  the rope trick can be learned, for example, but it takes a lot of practice to make it look smooth and convincing.  Similarly, cartooning is not an easy art form.  Practice, practice. I teach a class [...]

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