Picasso’s “Nude with Raised Arm and Drapery”

Drapery? Where? You mean those whitish-bluish triangles and trapezoids?
Picasso was twenty-six when he painted this. By the time he was fourteen, he had mastered the skill to create the illusion of drapery or any other illusion he might have felt like creating. There was big money in illusions in the 1890’s. But not for Picasso. With Picasso the illusion-achievements of the Renaissance come to an end. And that means, for one thing, drapery is dead. Finished.
The question is, do you have to master the Renaissance skills of drapery, anatomy and perspective to be an artist? The answer is “no,” but it’s an uncomfortable no. I’m uncomfortable about dismissing the value of drapery drawing/painting for two reasons. One is in the looking: drapery in an image draws the viewer in and focuses the mind like a labyrinth; more on this in the next post. The second reason is in the doing and for similar reasons: drawing drapery develops visual concentration since you are always drawing from the image in your mind; and it focuses the mind, resulting in the kind of high that comes from a)intense concentration on a limited problem and b) repetition of minutiae. This is drawing for the sheer pleasure of drawing, meaning the “high” you get from moving that pencil.

This is my pencil drawing of some drapery I set up for a demo in drawing class last week. Students watched over my shoulders and asked questions. As I was drawing I explained the procedure. This 17”x11” page took about an hour. Without my talking, I estimate it would have taken less than a half hour. It looks so easy and the principles of light-shadow-reflected light are a piece o’cake.
But the doing takes practice. But, hey, it’s not like there’s ever nothing to draw. Look around you. Throw your coat over a chair, leave the dish towel on the kitchen counter, don’t make your bed—drapery drapery everywhere….
In “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the need and result of practice. He has made the 10,000 hour rule famous: to get good at anything takes 10 years or 10,000 hours of practice. That comes to 3 hours a day.

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Picasso and the Woman Ironing

Today is Picasso’s birthday.

Yesterday the New York Times ran a two-page article about the analysis of his 1904 painting “Woman Ironing” which shows that it is painted over another painting, a portrait study, also by Picasso. Strapped for cash, he regarded the older, unfinished painting as mere canvas.

Go to http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/25/arts/design/hidden-picasso.html?ref=design to see the unfinished portrait of a man painted two or three years earlier.  (The image could not be copied and saved to file.)

The identity of the man is not nearly as interesting (though that is what fascinates the scholars and technicians who worked on this case) as the fact that Picasso abandoned the project and two years later thought it worthless.

The painting hidden under “Woman Ironing” is a competent study, of course.  Picasso had mastered all skills of drawing and painting by the age of fourteen.  Conventional portrait painting would have brought in a comfortable living. But Picasso, age twenty-two, did not allow himself to be satisfied with his prodigious technical skills. He was penniless and lived in a hovel.  He did not cave in.  The old way of seeing the world had to be abandoned.  How? And can you even do that?  And what will be the new way?  You sure?  Of course not.  But there is no evidence that Picasso ever doubted. His inability to doubt himself is not to be equated with complacency, however.  He worked every day of his life, long hours, way into the night.  He died April 8, 1973, shortly after getting up at 11 a.m., having worked, as usual, until 4 a.m.

Find the full NYtimes article at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/arts/design/under-a-picasso-painting-another-picasso-painting.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hpw

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“”Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” by Betty Edwards

On August 1, 1979 the Chicago Tribune printed a drawing by Picasso.  It filled more than half the page.  Picasso fans immediately identified it as representing Stravinsky, but they would have been in the minority and that’s not what matters.  What matters is that the drawing was upside down.

The caption read:  “Can’t draw? Try copying this upside-down drawing.  It’s one trick art teacher Betty Edwards uses to get students into the right-side brain mode.  Because the left hemisphere cannot process inverted information, the student is forced to draw what he sees, not what he thinks should be there.”

As she was doing a demo in her drawing class one day, Betty Edward, a fifty-one year old art teacher in California, had to admit that she couldn’t talk and draw at the same time.  Her dilemma had a physiological explanation:  the left hemisphere of the brain controls verbal skills and the right side of the brain does the visual work.  Since one has to dominate at any time, the two get into a conflict if you try to draw and verbalize what you’re doing at the same time.  In order to subdue the verbal side, she made her students practice upside-down drawing.  Within three months they could draw with astonishing skill and complexity.  The before and after examples she prints in her books are breathtaking.

Three months!! !  Upside-down drawing is the most valuable exercise you can do if you want to learn to draw.  Practice!   Practice daily.

See previous post for how to set up your drawing exercise.  Save your early work in a folder somewhere.  Three months later, pull it out, place it next to your accomplished drawing and remind yourself that learning to draw was easy.  Granted, it takes a rescheduling of your time, but an hour a day and two hours on Saturday or Sunday will do it.  Congratulations!  As Edwards says, if you can write your name and ride a bicycle (not at the same time) you have the necessary motor skills and hand-eye coordination it takes to draw.

In 1986, Edwards published “Drawing on the Artist Within.”  Both books are recommended for their insights and instructions.  But it’s not about quoting artists, dropping names and technical term, or knowing theory.  It don’t mean a thing unless you set time aside to practice.  Astonish yourself!  Get into the buzz of drawing.

To quote Edwards from the Tribune article:  “It can be a life-changing process in the sense that it’s not just learning to draw but learning to look at things differently, to see more.  Many of my students say that life seems richer, that they look at people differently, not  in the verbal way of naming—old, young, ugly, pretty—and dismissing, but that they stop and look at people’s faces and trees and plants.”

(I could not find the Tribune article by Connie Lauerman online.  More on Betty Edwares at    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Edwards)

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Choice of Subject

In the 15^th and 16^th century, if you wanted to make it as an artist, you had to be good at painting flesh: muscles and bosoms, etc.  In the 19^th century we got into landscapes.  In the 20^th, we expected to be surprised and even shocked and we now take it for granted that art gives us something new, a new perception.

Here are a couple of drawings from a still life set up that offered all sorts of subjects, including  an apple  nicely poised next to a pitcher.  But the pitcher-apple  combination is a trope in still life studies.  It’s more exiting to draw…a garden hose. That is, if you see a coiled up garden hose as an interesting subject.  Seeing is the first step and it can take students many months, even years, to experience the pleasure of shapes in banal objects and then to summon the courage to draw something so banal.  And then to have the skill to make a compelling drawing of …a garden hose.

Another exiting take of the still life is this one, showing the studio stools underneath.  They provide a severe counterpoint to the rolling hills of drapery.  They also allow a peek of the drapery completely in shadow—another counterpoint to the drapery on top.  There’s drama in this drawing. When you choose to include the underside of the “real” subject, you don’t have to know exactly how this will work out.  You just have to have a feeling for the not-so-given, the not-so-obvious, the not-so-comfortable.  This makes you a modern artist.

(Click to enlarge the images.)

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