LIFE DRAWING. Painting by Jenny Saville

Transcription

1 LIFE DRAWING Painting by Jenny Saville Belle Mellor Post Natal Depression 2004

2 Most people draw at times, doodling on a phone pad, explaining a route, drawing an idea. Any time that we deliberately leave some kind of trace, we draw. Drawings can be composed of any material light, charcoal, lead, leaves, stones, air, and so on both as support (the thing the drawing is laid on) and trace (the drawing itself). (From A Foundation Course in Drawing by Peter Stanyer and Terry Rosenberg. Published by Arcturus Publishing Ltd.) Exercise 1 Gestural drawings - 3 x 5-minute drawings working from a clothed or unclothed model These drawings are meant to be fun, the speed of their production being part of their meaning. They are an attempt to question some of the preconceptions and ingrained fears we have of drawing from life. Materials A2 paper plus black ballpoint pen, 2B/3B pencils and charcoal pencil. A2 drawing boards. Working in our group of 20, we will have two different volunteer models (clothed) for each of our 5-minute poses (so six people from our group will only be able to do two of the three drawings, as they will be posing). Nine people will work from each of the models. They might sit or stand on a table? First 5-minute drawing Once the model is posed, draw with speed and pressure using either ballpoint pen, pencil, or charcoal pencil and filling the piece of paper. Try to get most of the figure on the page. Be confident. Regard your hand as connected to your eye. Quickly draw what you see when you see it, moving from one side of the figure to the other. Don t attempt any detail. Use a curving line to relate the way that you are looking, following the eye as it roves around the figure. This will be a very loose drawing, relating directly to what you are seeing.

3 Second 5-minute drawing All change, second set of models! Use whichever of the above materials you haven t used before. In this drawing your eyes should be on the model continuously while you work. All the time that your pencil is moving, you should be looking at the model not at your drawing. Although this is difficult, try not to cheat. You can look at your drawing a couple of times, but not while your pencil is on the paper. We re looking at hand-eye coordination, like playing tennis, you watch the ball and not the racquet on its path to the ball. Again, fill the piece of paper and draw with pressure. Third 5-minute drawing New set of models. In this drawing; if you are left-handed, draw with your right hand; if you are right-handed, draw with your left hand. Fill the page and don t do faint, unconvinced lines. Use whichever of the above materials you haven t used before. The aim of this drawing is to open up the freer, less predetermined side of drawing. The lines in these drawings will be more expressive than in drawings that you can control more, when you use the hand you normally use. At some point after the workshop you can trace over these drawings and refine the mass of lines on your page down to a single outline, if you want to get another view of what you ve done.

4 Exercise 2 Upside-down drawing We won t be doing this in the BT Workshop as we won t have time, but it is another possible exercise you can do to practice drawing the human body. It s not always possible to set up or go to life drawing classes (and you may not even want to) so it s an exercise using secondary sources.

5 Work from these images or any images of figures that interest you. Work with A4 (or bigger) print-outs/images if possible. Make sure the images you use are upside down and draw on a piece of paper the same size as the image you ve chosen. Begin to copy the drawing, start anywhere you like most people start in the top left-hand corner but don t draw the whole outline first. Move from one line to the line next to it, fitting the parts together as you go. Try not to identify parts of the drawing as you come to them (eg like eyes and hands), try to treat them as unnamed shapes. Don t turn either drawing right-side up until you have finished. Then turn them both up the right way. With luck, you will be surprised at the freshness of your drawing. The aim of this exercise is to work with the right-hand side of the brain (or if you re left-handed, the left hand side of the brain) where you process information visually and spatially, as opposed to verbally and logically. When an image is upside-down, the verbal brain mode is disoriented in its attempt to use visual clues to name and categorise, so the other side of the brain comes into play and has to piece things together from purely visual clues. This exercise should help you see things in a new way. There are many books that give advice about how to set up exercises to explore different ways of drawing from life and most of them cover advice on perspective. I have put a list of these books in the bibliography. By Julian Opie

6 Bibliography The Encyclopedia of Drawing Techniques Hazel Harrison. Published by Search Press. ISBN (Good chapter on digital drawing) The Drawing Book Sarah Simblet. Published by Dorling Kindersley. ISBN The Artist s Guide To Perspective Janet Shearer. Published by New Holland. ISBN Experimental Drawing Robert Kampelis. Published by Watson Guptill. ISBN (Very badly laid out, but has useful material, particularly on working with grids) Creative Drawing Howard J. Smagula. Published by Laurence King. ISBN A Foundation Course in Drawing Peter Stanyer and Terry Rosenberg. Published by Arcturus. ISBN Make Your Mark Margaret Peot. Published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco. ISBN The Artist s Bible Edited by Helen Douglas Cooper. Published by Batsford. ISBN Drawing Keith Micklewright. Published by Laurence King. ISBN