Sargent in Leaps and Bounds

This is the work of a beginning drawing student.

Oops. Something just dropped on your keyboard. That’s your jaw.

I can offer no explanation for this astonishing performance. This student practices at home during the week, we know that, but she has not had this kind of homework before.

This drawing was done in the second half of our class period, with about an hour left to work on it. My instruction was to copy the Sargent drawing, not in a fussy way, but in the forcefulness of Sargent’s hand movements, i.e. his gesture in handling the graphite.

Each student had a xerox copy of the Sargent drawing taped to the top of her/his drawing board so that the eyes moved up and down from Sargent to drawing paper. Up and down is better than sideways, feels better on the eyes.

The student worked with a Cretacolor Art Stick.

Progress in drawing skills does not proceed gradually, but in…leaps and bounds.
And what a leap!

You can pick up your jaw now.

Are you inspired? Practice!

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was an American who spent most of his life in Europe, particularly Rome and Paris. Here we have his 1908 portrait of the Irish poet W.B.Yeats. Again, the object in this exercise was not to plagiarize the Sargent drawing to make it auction worthy, but to lean into the drawing tool the way he did.

Drawing by Shweta Nagdeve

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
http://katherinehilden.com
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Sargent and Reflected Light

We copied the Millais drawing (see previous post) and Sargent’s drawing of Yeats in one three-hour class meeting.

The Millais drawing had a limited value range, meaning the shades of gray were close together and there was no deep black. The Sargent drawing, by contrast, gives us intense black and gradations of equally assertive gray.

Our aim was to emulate his bravura graphite strokes and to summon the courage to produce large areas of a #10 on the values scale, i.e. a true fearless black.

This power can only be expressed with a powerful drawing tool, one that can deliver the “fearless black and the bravura graphite strokes.” Therefore, the first decision for the artist/student is to choose the right drawing tool. A #2 will not rise to this occasion, as you can see:

This student did not give up, however. She stubbornly continued to work on the challenge at home. And this time she wouldn’t be seen with a #2. Instead she reached into her tool kit  for the mighty Cretacolor #6 Art Stick. Ah, what a difference! Here’s the first stage of her new drawing:

Then she let the shock of hair cast a deep shadow over the forehead. The face at this stage has considerable depth. The second stage:

And finally, ta-tah, the Reflected Light at the right side of the face… a sliver of light at the very edge. Voila!

This sliver of Reflected Light was put in with that powerful, but subtle tool we met in the previous post: the Kneaded Eraser.

Now compare this finished drawing with the previous stages. Really look! Let each version pull you in and see the subtlety and power of that sliver of Reflected Light.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was an American painter who spent most of his life in Europe, particularly Rome and Paris. Here we were working from his 1908 portrait of the Irish poet W.B.Yeats.

Drawing by Mary Shieldsmith.

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

http://katherinehilden.com

http://facefame.wordpress.com

http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

http://khilden.com

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