artamaze by Katherine Hilden

http://www.katherinehilden.com

Enter the Artist’s Mind

Posted in Achievement, Master drawings, Technique and Demo, tagged 17th century, drawing, Incompletion, modern, preliminary drawing on June 6, 2020| Leave a Comment »

The idea of “incompletion” is so rich and stimulating that I want to stay with it even more.

This drawing is 7-1/2 inches high, made by an unknown Italian artist in the 17^th century. Notice how fast and scribbly these lines are. We are witnessing an artist thinking intensely and concentrating on the assigned theme.

Forget the client. The artist is not concerned about the client or anybody else liking this page. He is completely focused on the challenge of making this hang together.

This is why I love drawings—so called “preliminary“ drawings—above all, more than the painting that would be produced from it. It’s through the drawing that you enter the artist’s mind.

Look at the forcefulness of the lines:

These marks, made over three hundred years ago—spring from a modern sensibility.

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/markmaking-with-gainsborough/

Egon Schiele, Incomplete

Posted in Imagination, Master drawings, Romantic, Technique and Demo, tagged Egon Schiele, Gainsborough, Hilde Ziegler, im Kinsky, Incompletion, modernism, Sezession, Vienna on May 30, 2020| 2 Comments »

Before we look at #6 in this series of still life studies, let’s first take some time to wallow in the concept of “incompletion.” We’ve just encountered this concept in all of these five studies and, going back a few months, you recall, we looked at a series of drawings based on Gainsborough, also in the context of incompletion:

Now, here’s a drawing by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918), a superb and prolific draftsman.

The shoulder and bodice are left incomplete. We can be sure that he left the drawing “incomplete” on purpose. He was part of the avant-garde, called Sezession, in Vienna at the turn of that century. This feeling of incompletion is central to the modern sensibility, which comes out of romanticism.

If you’re yawning at this point, I thank you, because it means that you GET modernism. No need to dissect its concepts.

So then, why bring this up? I bring it up because students inevitably admire incompletion in famous artist’s work, finding the incompletion energetic and engaging, but they dismiss their own work because, well, “it’s not finished.”

Why do you admire a quality in a famous drawing, but reject the same quality in your own drawing. Are you willing to look at this? Yes, you are.

Egon Schiele’s, Mädchenporträt (Hilde Ziegler), about 18” high. Dated 1918, the year he died in the influenza pandemic. Recently discovered, it sold at auction in Vienna’s im Kinsky, 2012, for $304,000.

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/still-life-with-peaches-pear-and-cup-1/

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2020/05/13/still-life-with-peaches-pear-and-cup-2/

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2020/05/14/still-life-with-peaches-pear-and-cup-3/

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2020/05/15/still-life-with-peaches-pear-and-cup-4/

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/still-life-with-peaches-pear-and-cup-5/

http://www.katherinehilden.com

Markmaking with Gainsborough

Posted in Composition, Imagination, Seeing, Technique and Demo, Texture, tagged Columbus Indiana, Drawing as Seeing, Gainsborough, I.M.Pei, Incompletion, left-handed, markmaking, Modern Architecture, Modern art on September 7, 2019| 5 Comments »

Gainsborough

As some of you know, I recently moved to Indianapolis. I am now happy to let everyone know that I have recently started a drawing class in nearby Columbus, In. Columbus is famous for its world class modern architecture with a tourism center kept busy by an international crowd lining up to see those eighty (!!) famous buildings. This city of 47,000 has a branch of Indiana University but it did not offer a drawing class for the public until—tatah!—I jumped in to fill that vital void.

Our Columbus drawing class meets in the library–designed by I.M. Pei. The class, called “Drawing as Seeing,” has met only four times so far. I’ll start by showing the work done in our third class. Ready?

Our topic was “Markmaking,” which is a scribble/shading technique that is as individual and unique as your thumb print. After a brief demo with students looking over my shoulder, I sent everybody to their seats with a Xerox copy of Thomas Gainsborough’s masterful drawing called “Landscape with Horsemen.” You can see it at the top of this post.

What happened in class was highly rewarding and led to the discussion of an important topic: “incompletion” in a work of art.

ShwetaGainsborough

The time allotted for this exercise was only an hour and that proved to be an advantage because it meant that students had to leave with their drawings incomplete.

JudyGainsborough

I held up all the drawings and introduced the idea of Incompletion as a topic in modern art. I suggested that it’s precisely because these drawings are incomplete that they are so engaging.

MaryGainsborough

Incompletion in a work of art reaches us with evocative power. It engages us—paradoxically, perhaps—more than an image that’s carefully worked out in every detail.

Katlandscape

The next drawing was done by a left-handed student. I had copied him a mirror image of the original Gainsborough to work from because the left hand moves in a different radius than the right hand.

JustinGainsborough

I reminded students that they had the option of leaving the drawing as is, “incomplete,” or doing more work on it at home.

MaryLandscpe1

In the next class, this teacher was gratified that none of the students had “completed” the drawing. Every student seems to have gotten the modern bug.

We will get back to this Topic of Incompletion many more times.

We are off to a promising start!

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727-1788 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gainsborough

Columbus, Indiana https://columbus.in.us/architecture-story/

www.katherinehilden.com