INTRODUCTION
• A great deal of drawing is receptive which means we use it to
attempt to capture the physical appearance of something before
us.
• Another type of drawing is projective which means we may draw
something that already exists in our minds, either as a memory of
something we have seen or a vision of something we imagine
• The general tendency among today’s artists in Europe and the
United States seems to be toward projective types of drawing
AUGUSTE RODIN
When French sculptor Auguste Rodin saw a troupe of Cambodian
folk dancers in 1906, he was so transfixed by their graceful
movements that he went to their rehearsals and made dozens of
drawings. His Cambodian Dancer is one of these, heightened
with washes of watercolor and crayon. The drawing seems
almost as spontaneous and fluid as the dancer’s movements
that inspired it.
Auguste Rodin
CAMBODIAN DANCER. 1906.
LEONARDO DA VANCI
Leonardo da Vinci kept many of his exploratory drawings and
writings in notebooks. He drew this study of Three Seated
Figures next to idea sketches for some mechanical devices.
Leonardo da Vinci
THREE SEATED FIGURES AND STUDIES
OF MACHINERY. 1490
GUILLERMO DEL TORO
Guillermo del Toro, director of Hellboy, 3993, and other films, keeps
a sketchbook for jotting notes and ideas. The pages here show
his musings about the desire for fame, meeting other directors,
and sketches of some strange beings that found their way into
his 2006 feature Pan’s Labyrinth.
Guillermo del Toro
Pages from SKETCHBOOK.
2006.
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Van Gogh learned a great deal about both seeing and painting
through his practice of drawing. He was just beginning his short
career as an artist when he made the drawing of a Carpenter.
Although stiff, and clumsy in proportion, the drawing reveals van
Gogh’s careful observation and attention to detail. Yet he
struggled to render the world with pencil and crayon, as his
letters to his brother Theo show. In one of these notes, he
recalled the difficulty and a breakthrough.
Vincent van Gogh
OLD MAN WITH HIS HEAD
IN HIS HANDS. 1882.
PURPOSES OF DRAWING
3 Ways Drawings Can Function:
•
As a notation, sketch, or record of something seen,
remembered, or imagined
•
As a study or preparation for another, usually larger and more
complex work such as a sculpture, a building, a film, a painting,
or another drawing
•
As an end in itself, a complete work of art
MICHELANGELO & PICASSO
• These artists and many more used simple, tiny, and
quickly done sketches as a beginning point to later
create large masterpieces
• An example of this is Michelangelo’s study of the
LIBYAN SIBYL.
Michelangelo.
Studies for the
LIBYAN SIBYL on
the Sistine Chapel
ceiling. 1510.
ARTISTS
• Some artists didn’t think of these sketches as finished
artwork they did keep these tiny rough drafts as a
reminder of their creative process that lead them to
their final piece.
PABLO PICASSO.
FIRST COMPOSITION STUDY FOR GUERNICA. 1937.
CARTOONS
• Another form of preparatory drawing
• Its original meaning was a full-sized drawing
made as a pilot for a large work in another
medium, usually a painting or mosaic.
DRAWING TOOLS
• Some that tools used are 3 types of hatching.
• These are hatching, cross-hatching and
contour hatching
EXAMPLE OF CROSS-HATCHING
Charles White.
PREACHER. 1952.
DRY MEDIA
• Includes pencil, charcoal, conte, crayon, and pastel.
• The surface grain of the paper is also know as tooth.
• There are different techniques that can be used when
drawing with pencil in order to produce a range of
values. Line quality is determined by the hardness of
the pencil.
EXAMPLE OF PENCIL
Judith Murray
OBSIDIAN. 1988.
MORE DRY MEDIA
• Charcoal is easy to smudge, blur or erase and
can produce a wide range of light to dark
values
• Conte crayon is semi-dark chalk mixed with oil
• Pastels are similar to chalk and allow for less
detail
EXAMPLE OF CHARCOAL
Georgia O’Keefe
BANANA FLOWER. 1933.
EXAMPLE OF CONTE CRAYON
Georges Seurat.
L’ECHO. 1983.
EXAMPLE OF PASTELS
Rosalba Carriera.
PORTRAIT OF A GIRL WITH A BUSSOLA. 1725.
LIQUID MEDIA
• The most common drawing liquids are black or
colored inks
• There are washes of ink thinned with water that some
brush drawings made of
• These ink drawings can have similarities of water color
paintings
• In liquid media, felt- and fiber-tipped pens are widely
used as well as the pen-and-ink media
FOUNTAIN IN THE HOSPITAL GARDEN
• By Vincent van Gogh is a perfect example of liquid
media
• van Gogh used a Japanese bamboo pen and ink for
the lines in the drawing
• He varies the darkness of lines by using both full
strength and diluted ink
Vincent van Gogh.
THE FOUNTAIN IN THE
HOSPITAL GARDEN. 1889.
HOKUSAI
• Japanese artist
• A very skilled draftsman
• Said to have created about 13,000 prints and
drawings
• He has a good-humored statement about the
development of his artistic ability that should
encourage all artists to persevere.
GRAPHIC NOVELS/COMICS
• Chronological art form based on drawing
• In the early 20th century, most American
newspapers contained a few pages of
amusing comics
• By the 1950s, American comics were so wellknown that the trade began to control its own
content with the Comics Code Authority.
FAMOUS COMICS
• Art Speigelman and Francoise Mouly founded the magazine Raw.
This magazine was made to collect and publish the most
innovative work. It was ran for 11 years
• Gary Panter was a contributor to Raw. His drawn art includes two
graphic novels based on Dante’s Inferno.
• The 9/11 events threw him into depression and he turned to
making very short comics such as BACK TO NATURE.
• Gilbert Hernandez along with his brothers created one of the
longerst-running alternative comics, Love and Rockets.
LOVE AND ROCKETS
GROWTH OF COMICS
• Increasing recognition of graphic novels has led to
major publishers to search for artists and produce
their work.
• One of the most famous was PERSEPOLIS by Marjan
Satrapi
• PERSEPOLIS is a story of a girl growing up in a
progressive family in Tehran, Iran in the years before
the 1980s.
MARJANE SATRAPI.
PAGE FROM PERSEPOLIS. 2001.
CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
• Many artist use drawing in combination with other
media in finished works.
• Some use it as a tool to free the imagination by giving
tangible form to ideas.
• Some use drawing as an aid to understanding
drawings from the past
• A few artists use drawing to create works in new ways
using new media.
CHRISTINE HIEBERT
• Makes lines directly on walls with the blue tape that
painters use.
• In works that she does in exhibits, her lines affect our
perception of space.
• In UNTITLED, she interrupted the clean horizontals
and verticals of a gallery with diagnols of varying
thickness.
Christine Hiebert.
UNTITLED. 2004.
BARRY MCGEE
• Barry McGee removes drawing from the kingdom of
“fine art” and brings in to everyone’s level.
•
In UNTITLED 2006, he used pens he bought in a drug
store. The four heads resemble doodles that we might
make while talking on the phone or in class. The
paper was found in a dumpster and he bought the
frame at a thrift store.