The Elements of Drawing - Reimagined

Published in 1857, architect and critic John Ruskin's "The Elements of Drawing" was written in response to his concerns about art and art teaching.   

Ruskin established his Drawing School at Oxford in 1871 not for the training of artists, but of ordinary men and women, who, by following his course, ‘might see greater beauties than they had hitherto seen in nature and in art, and thereby gain more pleasure in life’. 

His method was premised on helping the student to master the rudiments of technique – outline, shading, colour – through a carefully directed course of lessons in copying both works of art and natural specimens. Over a period of fifteen years, Ruskin assembled a diverse collection of drawings for his students to copy including drawings by himself and other artists, as well as many reproductions.

The Elements of Drawing was originally written as three lengthy letters filled with exercises. There are very few illustrations and the 19th century writing is not readily accessible to contemporary readers. Ruskin's writing is sharp and critical of established orthodoxies. He decries the contemporary obsession with "boldness" of expression in favour of careful observation and patient development of rendering skills. Claude Monet noted that 90% of the 'theory' of impressionism came from this seminal writing. 

So why not just read it? Frankly, it's tough sledding unless you're accustomed to 19th century writing and minimal illustration. We're a bit spoiled by an abundance of colour illustration and approachable writing.  

http://ruskin.ashmolean.org/collection/8994

The Elements of Drawing - Reimagined is a modern project to reconsider and re-present Ruskin's ideas in ways that are more familiar and reassuring to contemporary readers by combining some of the original text, new writing and online demonstrations and supporting imagery. This re-presentation will naturally accord full credit to Ruskin for his brilliance and his thoughtful approaches to drawing while clarifying his central premise, to develop the artist's ability to both see and to execute images through a process of acute observation.  

Talking Heads 1

Drawing the human head is among the most challenging tasks, which for many of us remains a perpetual struggle.  For this series of exercises I draw on "Drawing the Human Head" by Bruce Hogarth published by Watson-Guptill in 1989.  It's a great book that I'm just edging into it and I'm going to share my struggle with you.

Drawing a human head

Heads are round, right?  We'll, sort of - but more like intersecting elipses.  

Here's a plain round head. 😕  and here's what it's based on...

 

So, that's a more complicated idea and we need to break it down. Let's start by thinking about the basic proportions. from the front  If we go back to the round head idea for a second, change the round shape to an oval 3 high x 2 wide

heres' my egg head!

From the side, we can abstract that complicated skull shape into 2 ovals, a vertical one and a horizontal one, about the same size... the drawing below is from "Drawing the Human Head".

Here's my take on the 2 oval profile view (drawn with Paper 53 on an iPad)

We can start looking at the "facial mass" as distinct from the "cranial mass"

 And for fun, start to manipulate the facial and cranial masses to render more complicated angles. This is where it starts getting tough!

up views and down views

I'm going to keep working on the "masses" before I tackle detailed rendering of features like eyes, noses, chins, hair etc. Let me know how you make out!

Excercise 1 - update

Jeff gave me (belatedly) his Exercise 1 (self portrait) yesterday.  I thought it was pretty good - he's now moving on to exercises 2 and beyond.

Exercise 5 - Fun with Folds!

Folded fabric (or, if you're getting on, skin) is a fascinating brain teaser to draw.  Light reflects most strongly at the top of the fold "ridge".  Folds aren't parallel, but I've simplified a diagrammatic fold in the sketch below to show basic rendering of a simple fold.  Add light source direction, shadowing from one fold to another, undercut (how fabric folds under itself) and other myriad issues to make fold studies a must do when seeking humiliation.  

In the detailed rendering below by J. Snow you can see all these complexities beautifully handled.  

Now it's your turn - set up your own drapery model still life, it could be clothing, curtains, a cloth.  Render it as best as you can using the general idea of keeping the "high points" the lightest and following the fold convergences to their crease points. Not happening?  Keep working on it. 

Here's a nice one by our friend Raphael.  You can just feel that fabric.  

And then there's the incomparable Joaquin Alberto Vargas y Chávez "Vargas" (1896-1982) with this lovely fold study below... in this case, the black lace is rendered transparently with shadow at the side and maximum transparency on the ridges. 

Exercise 5 - try your own fold study!

Exercise 4 - Gesture Drawings

Where contour drawing is slow and painstaking, gesture drawing is mad with abandon.  Draw what the figure is "doing" rather than the edges.  Draw through the figure quickly showing the essential action, weighting or "gesture" of the pose.

The image above is from the Natural Way to Draw and shows gestural drawing with weight, intent, and movement.

You can practice with a real model or on the site below.  Set the "controls" to any way you like, but I'd suggest 30 or 60 seconds with both male and female figures.  Clothing is up to you.

http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/

Happy drawing!

Exercise 3 - Contour Studies

Credit www.jasonwitte.com

Three types of drawing; Contour, Gesture and Modelled drawings form much of the technical basis of of drawing.  All tremendously useful study types and worlds apart, when practiced independently, the approaches can be re-integrated into the process of "drawing".

This week we're going to look at "Contour Drawing" using Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw (1941) as a basis for the exercise:

Contour Drawing - 1-2 hours

Different from an "outline", a contour is a careful and painstaking study of an object or grouping, keeping the eye on the subject and the pencil on the paper. In fact, the eye doesn't even look at the paper since it is instead looking a a particular part of the subject.  The pencil traces the contour edges of the subject so as to create in the mind of the artist, an unmistakable sense of what edge the pencil is tracing.  Nicolaides says to, "exactly coordinate the pencil with the eye" and to "be guided by the sense of touch more than that of sight".  An interesting trick to be sure, and one that, when practiced, yields a much stronger sense of connection to a subject, necessary to execute believable drawings.

Set up in a comfortable location with paper of about 15"x20" (40cm x 50cm) and a 3B pencil.  Fasten the paper to a hard backing and sit close to your subject.  "Wait until you are convinced that the pencil is touching that point on the model upon which your eyes are fastened".  Start anywhere and stop anywhere.

Contour Faces (credit www.youthareawsome.com/contour-drawing/)

backpack (credit www.drawing-fun.net)

here are some that I did last week

Raphael master copy - Exercise 2

Whew, I learned a lot from this one... turns out Raphael (Sanzio da Urbino) was rather good at his job

Here's the first one I tried - there was something going wrong somewhere so I abandoned it ...

The second one was a bit "better" so I worked it up, but it's still problematic.  Proportions are still not quite right but there you go.  Good crosshatching practice anyway and the shoulders were interesting to work on.

By exploiting the new science of "grid" based technology, I got the proportions more like the original

and here is try number 3 with most (but not all) of the grid erased (conté on paper)

ok, this one is still way better - but it's RAPHAEL for crying out loud!