artamaze by Katherine Hilden

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

Still Life with Peaches, Pear, and Cup, 2

Posted in Collage, Failed Effort, Illustration, Imagination, inspiration, literalness, Roundness, Semiotics, Still life, Surreal, Technique and Demo, Texture, tagged Bruce Boyer, collage, ellipse, juxtaposition, Magritte, markmaking, mimesis on May 13, 2020| 6 Comments »

A drawing can go through many stages of development. The artist may not aim for mimesis or may not have a particular style in mind at all. The artist may try one kind of markmaking here and another style there. The drawing may develop with a progression from dark to light or various degrees of precision.

The drawing can be called complete even though it contains visual contradictions. Let’s look at contradictions.

In the above drawing, the markmaking in A is vibrant and lively. The background to the objects on the table seems to shimmer. In B the markmaking is the opposite, it’s mechanical and tight. This dense, dark stripe representing the table appears to have been made by a different hand, in a very different mood. The contrast between A and B does not add drama to the image as a whole. Rather, it looks arbitrary and therefore the drawing feels unresolved.

In modern art we often find contrasts, inconsistencies and contradictions that are witty. Consider the following two examples.

The hand fits perfectly over the face, as when a woman is surprised or embarrassed. But hand and face are from different worlds, different contexts. So they fit together in one sense, but are mismatched in another. We smile at this surprising juxtaposition.

Collage, a quintessentially modern art form, lends itself very well to creating contradictions and witty juxtaposition.

It’s easy to play with photographs by collaging together disparate elements.

Place a cassette over a face and, voila, the two holes will read like eyes. As moderns we know that all images, symbols and myths are human inventions and so we chuckle when we see the invention process being made so obvious.

Back to the class drawing of the still-life. This student/artist gives us a very credible rendering of reflected light and deep shadow of the cup at C. As in the previous drawing, the ellipse is not “swinging” but is drawn slowly and carefully and therefore it falls flat. Practice. Practice. Practice

We will talk some more about this cup and the demanding but swinging ellipse in the next posts.

More at:

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/untitled-xii/

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/plug-by-the-sea-side/

Aphrodite by seph

Videotape Eyes by Rebecca DiLiberto.

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

Through the Xerox Lens

Posted in Achievement, faces, Technique and Demo, Texture, tagged enlarge, Gaby Edgerton, markmaking, Xerox on July 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

To get a fresh view of your drawing, you can enlarge or reduce it on the Xerox machine. It’s best if you make a drastic change in size. For example, here are some drawings by Gaby Edgerton. She made very small studies, only about 1½ inches high. Then she took them to a duplicating machine and blew them up to about 12” high. I’m showing the enlargements here. Where before, in the tiny drawing, you could only see the general form of the drawing, now in the enlargement you can see the drama of her markmaking. Where the small drawings looked rather delicate, now you can see that the lines are bold and energetic.
Working small can be quite easy. If you see your drawing suddenly large and impressive, you may be encouraged to work with greater daring the next time, whatever size you work in.————-

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
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Stage Set with Circular Forms, Part 2

Posted in Achievement, Composition, Romantic, Roundness, Seeing, Still life, Technique and Demo, tagged abstraction, markmaking, shading, slamander, Stage Set on May 5, 2014| Leave a Comment »

How long does it take to draw a still life like the one in the previous post? Three hours. This does not mean that graphite is being deposited on paper uninterruptedly for three hours. Much of the time is devoted to looking, considering, deciding, trying. The big decision, of course, is when to stop.
I tend to like a work at a very early stage of its development. That’s probably because of my love of abstraction and so a few lines on the page already speak to me. As for the love of incompletion, that’s an attribute of a romantic sensibility. I’m one of those.

In this second “stage set” Gaby again produced a fine drawing, this time with more delicate markmaking and with more devoted attention to shading . I’ll show it here in two stages, the one that starts the post being the final one. Final, not only in the sense of three-hours-are-up but also in the sense of “it is resolved.”

What’s particularly effective in the drawing is how the rectillinear edges on the left were worked out to contrast with the round billowing forms on the right.

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
http://www.khilden.com
http://facefame.wordpress.com
http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com
http://www.katherinehilden.com

Off With Your Head!

Posted in Achievement, Composition, faces, Master drawings, Technique and Demo, tagged Chicago, drips, Henry VIII, Holbein, markmaking, model, Queen Elizabeth II, Stabila-All-Aquarellable on June 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Holbein must have been charming, wise and super-diplomatic. He drew the ladies of the court of Henry VIII and had to paint the big burly beheading potentate himself. You remember six-wives Henry, the one who said, “Off with your head, Ann Boleyn!” Hans Holbein(1497-1543) was a skilled draftsman, but was his hand shaking a little, just a little, when he faced the vain, all-powerful king?

When we draw people, we’re often constrained by the desire to please them. Your art gets cramped when you’re focused on anything but your art. So, off with your head, I’m drawing! When we have a model, I remind the students that they’re not drawing to please the model but only to struggle with their work, the medium, the concept, the surprises that occur in the working process. When we don’t have a model, we often work from printed images. In this case, a student/artist chose a photo of the young Queen Elizabeth, when she visited Chicago in the ‘50’s. Notice that

these drawings are not flattering, but instead explore the potential of the medium to create a page of studies with mood and character. The markmaking is scratchy, the contours are blurred, and oh, the drips! To mood and character, let’s add a touch of irony. Once you know that The Queen was the model, the page becomes a bit comical, which makes you reflect deeper and that’s a good thing. When that happens, you’re looking at art.

Maggy Shell, worked on gloss paper with the Stabilo-All-Aquarellable pencil.———–

Raphael, Rubens and the Individual Approach

Posted in Imagination, inspiration, Roundness, Still life, Technique and Demo, Texture, tagged drapery, Gaby, individuality, Linné, markmaking, Raphael, Rubens, technique on September 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

In my drawing class, I present demos on various techniques and then stand back to see who will use those techniques and to what degree. The lesson on shading, for example, will make quite a different impression on different students. A student takes what he or she can use at that moment—and feels like using. That is, I think, as it should be.

One student, Gaby, has been using a careful shading technique for drapery studies that fill the page with a compelling presence and at the same time invite associations to anatomical features. The illusion of three-dimensionality of these round forms is difficult to achieve and requires intense concentration and visualization.

Another student, Linné, working from the same still life set-up (see previous post) avoids the articulation of light-shadow-reflected-light and instead suggests the drapery with his own forceful lines. In some passages of the drawing, he goes into the sheer pleasure of markmaking and simply invents. Mysterious humanoid forms emerge while at the same time clearly representing drapery.

‘Twas not ever thus. Individual expression was not tolerated among the Renaissance and Baroque artists who worked with numerous assistants in their spacious workshops. For example, Raphael (1483-1520) and Rubens (1577-1640) trained their assistants to specialize in certain aspects of a painting like drapery, clouds, water,architectural detail and flesh. The assistants had to reproduce the master’s technique so faithfully that the whole tableau appeared to have been painted by the same hand–the master’s. We tend to forget this—and we’re supposed to—when we look at these enormous paintings and frescoes. Rubens’ paintings celebrating the life of Marie de Medici measure about 14 feet in height. Raphael’s School of Athens fills a wall in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

Let’s not be overwhelmed by the achievements of these masters and let’s instead give credit to those unnamed assistants. We moderns, lucky us, can study the techniques of those big guys from the past and then enjoy the freedom to find our own individual approach.

Harvest the Crop

Posted in abstraction, Achievement, Composition, Negative space, Seeing, Still life, Technique and Demo, Texture, tagged boot, cropping, horizon, Maggy, markmaking, quadrants, repitition on July 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

This was the black lace-up boot on some crumpled up cloth, what artists in their rarified line of work are allowed to call “Still life with boot and drapery.”

So you have this boot in front of you and you think you have to draw it because, well, obviously that’s the object you’ve been given to draw. A duh moment.

When Maggy had drawn the boot and surrounding drapery, the boot looked good, but the drawing didn’t. Meaning, the page of her charcoal marks, didn’t “work,” meaning it was not fun to look at. What was fun to look at, however, was her markmaking. So, let’s not give up on this thing. She played with cropping by placing strips of white paper over her large drawing, trying to find a window that could stand on its own. Voilá!

This is an invaluable step in your art making and in no way a judgment that the original drawing was a failure. Look what it contained! You just had to find it.

Now, this is fun to look at. “Fun” is a sloppy word, isn’t it, but what it means is that your eye loves the texture and your attention is held by all these alignments and echoes. Notice, also, that the page falls into quadrants (see also post 6.30) and that the vacancy at upper right (orange) adds tension to the other three quadrants.

Yes, but what IS it? It’s an image that plays with me. Why would I want a boot instead!

Does Not Make Nice

Posted in Achievement, Composition, Still life, Technique and Demo, Texture, tagged aquarellable, emotion, Gaaby, gloves, markmaking, monumental, pot, still life on July 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Same gloves as before (previous post), same old pot. But what a different feeling!

While Linné’s drawing holds us with its tense composition, Gaby’s drawing grabs us emotionally. She places the pot in the middle of the page and the gloves on left and right, giving us a rational anchor in symmetry. Nice, thank you. But the drawing quality itself does not make nice. Her markmaking is frenzied. We can recognize the two objects on either side as gloves, but they might also be agitated organism. It’s a compelling double-take, given that the glove is an analog of the hand.

Somehow she managed to make the whole thing look monumental (and I can’t quite analyze that effect), making the gloves surreal and spooky. Notice the urgency of the deep black scribbles on either side of the pot/tower. There’s something ominous about that background. (Maybe that’s where the illusion of monumentality comes from).

The whole page pulsates. I keep looking at this page, drawn into its life.

The drawing, about 12” x 14”, was done in Aquarellable Pencil on gloss paper.

Learning to Draw: Picasso and Van Gogh

Posted in Illustration, Imagination, inspiration, Life drawing, Master drawings, Technique and Demo, tagged learning, markmaking, passion, persistence, Picasso, prodigy, Van Gogh on June 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a prodigy. He drew incessantly as a child, filling the margins of his school books with sketches. His father, an art teacher, is said to have handed his son his own brushes and paints, saying, “here, you have surpassed me.” When Picasso was fourteen, his drawings looked like this.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), the son of a strict Calvinist minister, was interested in drawing as a child and as a young adult while he worked as an assistant art dealer, teacher and missionary. It wasn’t until his late twenties that he devoted himself to art full time. At the age of twenty seven, his drawing looked awkward and tortured.

I cringe when I look at this. But he persisted. He worked at it, for ten years, never achieving the grace of Picasso’s draftsmanship. Van Gogh is not admired for his drawings, but for the evocative power of his paintings. The passion we sense in his paintings relies on primary colors and, oddly enough, an unaffected calligraphy in the handling of the brush, course and immediate.

A graceful line can be so admirable as to challenge imitation. But not everybody can make a line dance. What to do? Must the line dance? What if, like Van Gogh’s ten years after the above drawing, it screams, groans, and pounds its fists in rage? What if the line you produce speaks a language you have never heard before?

The next few posts here will be devoted to my students’ recent work. Amazing things happen in that drawing class all the time. That’s because (I think) the students are beginning to respond to their own markmaking, their own line quality, their own dynamics. None of them are Picassos.

An article on Picasso’s early work: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/09/picassos_fascinating_early_works/