Tracing and transferring images

[Mike McCarty]

I would echo David's sentiments. Create, be happy.

[Douglas Drenkow]

From...

http://www.rice.edu/projects/Blaffer.../venetian.html

...comes...

"In a famous anecdote, Vasari recounts Michelangelo's comments after visiting the studio of Titian, who was in Rome for a brief sojourn in the mid-1540s: Michelangelo supposedly praised Titian, 'saying that his coloring and style pleased him very much but that it was a shame that in Venice they did not learn to draw well from the beginning.'"

More on this neverending debate can be found in that website as well as in...

http://webexhibits.org/feast/context/venetianart.html

Drawing is indeed a wonderful art. But painting can be an art unto itself.

"LINES DO NOT EXIST IN NATURE. What you interpret as a line is the place where two areas of different color or tone come together, and your imagination supplies the line between them." - Hereward Lester Cooke, then Curator of Painting at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (quoted in his classic work, "Painting Techniques of the Masters", which does, however, recognize the power of drawing, at least in the hands of certain artists).

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, "Art is as art does."

[Steven Sweeney]

I'm not sure whether lines exist in nature or not (though any given segment of a spider web seems, for example, pretty linear to me, and that took only an idle moment to think of -- there must be lots of other instances), but it seems to me that the point of learning to draw well -- which is much much more than making linear outlines -- is that, if there are lines in nature and I want to depict them, I would -- because of my drawing experience and the way it trained my eye -- know where to put that line in relation to other lines or objects, I would be able to correctly represent its angle from the horizontal or vertical and accurately gauge its length. These are the same judgments I later had to make when painting, as I considered whether an eye was the correct width, whether the eyes were in proper relation to each other and to the brow, the nose, the ears, whether the hands were too long or the foreshortened feet foreshortened too much. A well executed pencil drawing with accuracy and economy of line is a very beautiful thing in its own right, and the beauty extends to the fact that in order to create the drawing, the artist had to be able to accurately see and then accurately replicate what was seen. If the artist was using Bouguereau as a standard but, for lack of the skills that a trained draftsman's eye can implement, winds up with the flounder features of a Picasso, it's generally disappointing for both artist and viewer. If a painter is gifted or talented enough to be able to work in a realistic representational style without having to learn to handle graphite or charcoal, that's fine. I wasn't, so I did.

[Douglas Drenkow]

Painting consists of five basic considerations: Line, form, space, color, and composition -- the last comprised of the first four.

The first three are primarily, as you have so vividly described, considerations of "spatial relations" -- the province of the right brain.

Painting, as the non-objective artists have demonstrated, is at its most basic the application of color -- which as we've discussed elsewhere (as in the "Primary Colors" thread) is a matter of physics, physiology, and psychology and, I would assert, more the province of the logical and linguistic left brain (as well as the more basic, emotional, "subconscious" realm of the mind).

Ideally, as in the works of Da Vinci, both halves of the brain work together, in art, science, and life; nonetheless, the tradition of "painterliness", as beginning with Titian, does by definition stress the coloring of surfaces over the draughtsmanship of line (although as a practical matter, anything that we can do to render our subjects as accurately as possible is, of course, most respectful and profitable).

As for spider webs, I can tell you as something of an entomologist (another hat I wear) that each strand of silk does indeed have a measurable thickness -- as opposed to a true line (a geometric construct of the mind) -- and, thus, like any other object in nature is bounded at its edge by a row of atoms, whose electron clouds, the scientists tell us, are dispersed to infinity.

Any line we draw -- like any art we create -- is truly in the eye of the beholder. I admire it all (That's my "line" and I'm sticking to it)!

[Steven Sweeney]

Electron clouds, hmm? Well, that would explain, I suppose, why so many of my earlier drawings have disappeared. Some of the more recent ones are looking a little fuzzy, too.

No, the spider's silk isn't a geometric construct of the mind, which is precisely why its "molecularly bulky" presence is optically available to us. And the best we can do is to use our implements -- whether 6H pencil sandpapered to a needle point, or a rigger loaded with paint -- to represent that inherent width, shape, bulk, "line" as we understand it when we say "draw a line." And when we set that graphite or that brush down and begin to draw, it's a pleasure, I think, to try as closely as possible to mimic nature's placement and design. It is also my prerogative as the artist to adjust that design according to my own purposes, but I do so with the confidence that I'm in charge of where I choose to locate and define lines, shapes, values and colour. Hundreds of hours' worth of drawing practice, like hundreds of hours of batting practice, increases the odds that I'll knock one out of the park.

Drawing is a useful skill, but I agree that many painters carry out a career's worth of fine work without having learned to manipulate the fine line. Others, such as Mary Cassatt, have left behind beautiful pencil and drypoint drawings that are stunningly evocative in their simplicity and economy. I believe that facility enhanced her paintings, as well.

[Douglas Drenkow]

You are right, of course, that a spider's web -- or any other object -- is not simply a construct of the mind (Unless we get completely Socratic in our thinking). However, to define a limit to any physical object is indeed a mental exercise -- the closer you look, the more you see there is no defining edge (although to be fair, I concede that the painterly invention of "lost edges" refers not to atomic theory but to parallax etc. -- more on such illusions below).

Although this is usually a distinction without a difference -- human beings have such powers of delineation and definition to make sense of the world around them -- there are concrete consequences. For example, in a life-drawing class, I doubt that any two artists will portray the same model with exactly the same set of lines (It would hardly be art if they did).

The subjects we objective artists portray are real; but the lines we draw are subjective, depending on such physical factors as our distance to the subject, our angle of view, the detail viewable in the available lighting, etc...

http://www.optillusions.com/

...but equally importantly, what we choose to portray or not portray as artists with our lines or colors says a lot about ourselves and our subjects -- which I believe is at the heart of what you've been getting at.

Beyond technical proficiency, of laying out lines in geometric accordance with the forms observed, are we to draw and/or paint our subjects "warts and all" or in the most flattering view?

Like I said, I admire it all!

[Nathaniel Miller]

There's a J.S. Sargent exhibit touring museums right now, and I was lucky enough to get over to St. Louis to see it. The focus of the exhibit is his drawings and landscape sketches in watercolor, so I was a little dissappointed that I didn't get to see any of his beautiful portraits.

As I was walking through the hallways lined with his drawings, I was really stunned. He could draw a very life like portrait with less than 10 lines. One of the subjects he repeatedly drew was a flamenco dancer, and the expression of her movement with extremely economic line was incredible. I loved looking at and studying these drawings. The feeling I had when viewing these works is partly why I'm giving up pursuit of a career in research to attend an atelier after I finish my current studies. For some reason, I find it absolutely enthralling.

I know that many terrffic artists don't know how to draw well, and I wish them nothing but success. For myself, though, I couldn't imagine an artistic career that didn't include this beautiful skill.

[Steven Sweeney]

. . . are we to draw and/or paint our subjects "warts and all" or in the most flattering view?

Whatever serves our artistic purpose. We're all kings and queens in the realms of our own studios. But when the heirs of the Wicked Witch of the West commission that posthumous portrait, I want to have my wart-sketching abilities well and truly honed.

[Douglas Drenkow]

Wicked Witch of the West? Now THAT'S one portrait I've GOT to see!

And Nathaniel, your description of "economic line" really struck a chord: One of the first artists who really made an impression on me, at a VERY early age (40 years ago), was Hirschfeld...

http://www.alhirschfeld.com/

...which, with Disney and Hanna-Barbara, led me into cartooning and little animated films.

But after that -- and drawing COUNTLESS realistic and schematic sketches of every conceivable plant and animal species (including Homo sapiens), inside and out, in every macroscopic to microscopic detail for years on end -- I've come to appreciate not only the art of drawing but also, as a breath of fresh air, the art of painting, as an art unto itself, as I'm sure each of you has.

Graphite is my comfort; paint is my passion.

[Douglas Drenkow]

For anyone reading these comments who might be in the dark about the "warts and all" reference, take a look at...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/...000/326121.stm

...in which you'll find this...

"Evidence also suggests [Oliver] Cromwell [Lord Protector of England] was a man of honesty. When commissioning a portrait of himself, he told the painter: 'I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me ... warts and everything.' The artist duly obliged."

Commonly given as "warts and all", it is perhaps the most famous quote about a portrait in history.

And, of course, it works not only for rough-hewn Puritans overthrowing bewigged aristocrats but also for "wicked witches" as well!