During my Amsterdam drawing classes I try to convey the classical approach to learning art as a near surefire method of learning the principles of the visual language. This is not to be confused with saying it is "the best way to make art" or even a guarantee that the art you produce when learning to draw with the old master's approach will be beautiful or compelling.
My point to this blog entry is to express my reluctance to believe in, and point out the pitfalls of certain assumptions or dogmatic views that certain teachers hold, or that the public has about making art.
When teaching a method of drawing, no matter how good, a proper teacher will tell you the downsides of this method, and must stress the fact that this is not the only way to do things.
Dogma 1: There is one best method of drawing
If we take the academic drawing method, it is very slow, focused on accuracy and precision and follows certain learning and execution steps which are well known. When drawing fast poses and quick gesture sketches, this approach is not practical, but in other circumstances it can create amazing results.
Take on the other hand the quick sketch illustrative approach. This creates beautiful flowing lines and plenty of expression, but the detail may be missing and accuracy is often sacrificed for the sake of a more organic and spontaneous result.
It is nonsense to say either approach to drawing is "better" than the other one. Each approach has it's place in art and you can choose to use them depending on the situation, the result you are looking for and the one you find more enjoyable.
Dogma 2: Painting and drawing must be kept separate
This one is a very damaging dogma that some art teachers spread and which make some practitioners struggle unnecessarily with their art. The dogma says that when painting, lines and drawing are not to be used. Painting must be done on a tone and mass kind of way and problems with proportions, alignment and form must be sorted out in the thick of things.
The problem with this, is that if the artist's drawing skills are weak, those problems can never be sorted out. It becomes an endless, frustrating struggle that produces nothing but weak results.
The basis for painting is drawing. No question about it. You can then use these drawing skills to make markers or drawings with your brush, or even with charcoal before starting to paint.
Some academic artists take this one step further by creating a full drawing study and then transfering it to the canvas so that they separate the drawing from the painting. Having tried this, it does feel a bit like painting by numbers, but with experience, the result can be made to look as natural and beautiful as any painting made in a tonal manner.
Dogma 3: Fresh art must be made in a careless way
This is one poorly conceived idea that I try to discredit as soon as possible in my Amsterdam drawing classes. The thinking is that to obtain results that appear loose and fresh, the piece must be created with a careless approach.
The reality is that to create a beautiful work of art, the artist must become a kind of criminal mastermind, plotting and scheming about composition, light color harmony and also brushwork and edges. These last two being largely responsible for the feeling of spontaneity in a finished piece.
Remember that loose results can only be good if they are deliberate. If you try to create art by acting carelessly and hoping it will come out right, you are stacking the odds badly against yourself.
Dogma 3: Good original art cannot look like any other before it
This is the kind of idea that has aspiring artists creating the most weird and peculiar things and more often than not, failing to strike a successful formula for aesthetic results. The reason is simple, it is easier to stand on the shoulders of giants and learn about principles that worked well for artists in the past.
No aspiring novelists sets out to write their work by first re-inventing language or trying to completely rework the structure of what a novel is. The possibilities are so endless within the given framework that we can benefit from exploring those before veering off in some awkward tangent.
This is not to say that pushing for originality is a bad thing, but we humans are original even when we're not trying. When you learn to draw and practice by making master copies, the impulse to make changes is almost unavoidable. In the end the fear of being like a parrot that only replicates the work of others gets in the way of learning the principles of art in order to make more educated choices on your own work.
Dogma 4: Art that is well executed is boring
This one is probably the worse art calumny that has been spread after the impressionists. These guys departed from the strict salon style looking to find true effects of light, which could only be captured in very short periods of time and outdoors. This meant drawing had to be sacrificed in favor of speed and color accuracy.
Unfortunately, the lesson taken from this was that something drawn and executed with exquisite finish was boring and not progressive enough, and ever since then, artists have tried to get away with ever diminishing levels of craftsmanship.
It's interesting, but painting seems to be the only art where something poorly made can still be called good. Fair to say that some cubist and postmodern works are good. They have interesting compositions, strong use of color and line, but a lot of them are total crap and we should be able to say that a specific Picasso or Mondrian is total crap.
When we hear a song in the radio that is poorly plaid or just bad, we call it bad no matter who it's from.
Hope this gives you some ideas of what to look out for. Don't be afraid to learn properly, and don't think that one single approach is the best one no matter how famous the teacher that conveys it!
Showing posts with label amsterdam drawing classes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label amsterdam drawing classes. Show all posts
Monday, October 21, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Drawing classes Amsterdam, the Loomis Method
In my Amsterdam drawing classes I offer the possibility to learn creating portraits either from photos or from the live model.
Learning to draw from the live model is a demanding discipline, so it is perhaps a good idea to start by learning to draw faces from photos on the internet, since you can choose the level of difficulty and type of face, as well as enjoying a model that you can summon whenever you feel like and always stands still.
One of the cited methods to learning to draw the portrait is the Loomis Method. Andrew Loomis was an illustrator who could create faces and characters from his imagination thanks to the deep knowledge he had from the human skull and anatomy.
To illustrate the power of a method and knowledge of a subject, here are two portraits that I have created. This first one was created through pure practice and honing my powers of observation:
This was drawn from the live model during 3 sessions and it's a work of pencil on paper. As you can see, there is plenty of detail on this drawing, all the parts of the face seem to be in the right place, and there is knowledge of using the gray scale, called values, to achieve a sense of volume. However, from an academic perspective this is a fairly weak drawing as I will explain by pointing to the strengths of this next example.
This was done using academic knowledge and the Loomis Method:
You will argue the differences are small, but then again learning to draw is learning to understand the power that small details have on the whole. Notice the stronger knowledge of anatomy, which becomes apparent on the structure of the eyes, nose and lips. The skull structure is also well understood, which allows the values to more clearly show the different planes of the head. This all sounds almost too technical, but it gives the drawing a certain clarity of thought that the smooth and mooshy result of the previous one does not achieve.
Having a method and learning it through drawing classes also allows you to start doing the 'mechanical' part of the drawing in a more sure-footed way, and in turn focusing more of your attention on compositional touches and fancier expression. Notice the play of edges on the hair, which are sometimes diffuse and sometimes very hard or broken.
When learning to draw with a particular method, be aware that some of your first results will be even worse than the drawings you normally produce. This is OK, you're taking a step back in order to absorb the new method. Sometimes this feels terrible and its frustrating, because your eye is ahead of what your hands can do, and it's telling you the results are no good.
In this particular example, the first drawing though week bears a closer resemblance to the model, while in the second one, a good piece of art has been created, but resemblance has suffered, though not dramatically.
The Loomis Method focuses on thinking of the entire skull as a structure in space, with a very specific shape, which once grasped allows you to place the features in the correct position. This method proves something rather counter-intuitive for beginning artists, which is that the individual features can never help enhance resemblance when the correct structure of the skull has not been assessed correctly.
Stick with it and you will get there with method, practice and discipline. During my Amsterdam drawing classes I encourage students to only draw at a speed at which they can be accurate and not a second faster. Only frustration will come from rushing in and building on top of a shaky foundation.
Good luck!
Learning to draw from the live model is a demanding discipline, so it is perhaps a good idea to start by learning to draw faces from photos on the internet, since you can choose the level of difficulty and type of face, as well as enjoying a model that you can summon whenever you feel like and always stands still.
One of the cited methods to learning to draw the portrait is the Loomis Method. Andrew Loomis was an illustrator who could create faces and characters from his imagination thanks to the deep knowledge he had from the human skull and anatomy.
To illustrate the power of a method and knowledge of a subject, here are two portraits that I have created. This first one was created through pure practice and honing my powers of observation:
This was drawn from the live model during 3 sessions and it's a work of pencil on paper. As you can see, there is plenty of detail on this drawing, all the parts of the face seem to be in the right place, and there is knowledge of using the gray scale, called values, to achieve a sense of volume. However, from an academic perspective this is a fairly weak drawing as I will explain by pointing to the strengths of this next example.
This was done using academic knowledge and the Loomis Method:
You will argue the differences are small, but then again learning to draw is learning to understand the power that small details have on the whole. Notice the stronger knowledge of anatomy, which becomes apparent on the structure of the eyes, nose and lips. The skull structure is also well understood, which allows the values to more clearly show the different planes of the head. This all sounds almost too technical, but it gives the drawing a certain clarity of thought that the smooth and mooshy result of the previous one does not achieve.
Having a method and learning it through drawing classes also allows you to start doing the 'mechanical' part of the drawing in a more sure-footed way, and in turn focusing more of your attention on compositional touches and fancier expression. Notice the play of edges on the hair, which are sometimes diffuse and sometimes very hard or broken.
When learning to draw with a particular method, be aware that some of your first results will be even worse than the drawings you normally produce. This is OK, you're taking a step back in order to absorb the new method. Sometimes this feels terrible and its frustrating, because your eye is ahead of what your hands can do, and it's telling you the results are no good.
In this particular example, the first drawing though week bears a closer resemblance to the model, while in the second one, a good piece of art has been created, but resemblance has suffered, though not dramatically.
The Loomis Method focuses on thinking of the entire skull as a structure in space, with a very specific shape, which once grasped allows you to place the features in the correct position. This method proves something rather counter-intuitive for beginning artists, which is that the individual features can never help enhance resemblance when the correct structure of the skull has not been assessed correctly.
Stick with it and you will get there with method, practice and discipline. During my Amsterdam drawing classes I encourage students to only draw at a speed at which they can be accurate and not a second faster. Only frustration will come from rushing in and building on top of a shaky foundation.
Good luck!
Monday, September 30, 2013
Drawing lessons in Amsterdam, The importance of Method
During this post about the drawing classes I offer in the center of Amsterdam, I would like to describe in very brief detail the importance of method in learning art, and describe the alternative results that can be obtained.
Perhaps I can relate to this closely not due to my drawing lessons, but because of another passion in my life, which is to play guitar.
I have been playing for a long time, and after over a decade I have certain dexterity with my fingers, as well as what seems to be a more or less innate ability to hear things correctly. This last factor made me never look for musical education or method. I would listen to songs I liked and learned to play them, having lots of fun in the process and laughing at friends of mine who would attend guitar lessons.
Proper art lessons back then seemed like the most boring and pointless thing. They took away the spontaneity and turned this fun hobby into a boring methodical activity. They introduced effort and consistency into something that I though should be loose and organic.
This is very often the felling we have about drawing lessons and how art should be done.
In fact for some time my natural ear and enthusiasm made it so that I was ahead of all these guys taking endless lessons and learning boring scales and other such things. But then something funny started to happen. The guys taking consistent lessons had built a huge strong foundation and when the time came, their skills skyrocketed, while my playing remained sloppy and repetitive.
It hurts me to say it but this was over 15 years ago, and though my guitar skills have improved dramatically since then, I cannot compete with someone who learned and mastered the principles such as scales, correct picking technique, etc.
Such is the case with drawing lessons and art education in general. You can wing it up to a certain level but unless you learn the principles and learn them well, you will plateau for lack of knowledge if nothing else.
As a concrete example of what this means during drawing and painting, we can take portraits. It is indeed possible to draw and paint faces without any knowledge of anatomy, and to be fair the results may end up quite OK. However, quite OK is not good enough and if you want your portraits to acquire that clean impressive result, learning anatomy and formal portraiture methods is the only way to go.
There is a distinct look and feel to a portrait made by someone with thorough academic drawing education. The knowledge of line, value, planes and anatomy is unmistakable. It simply comes through.
A lot of this has to do with the fact that, deep knowledge of your subject's construction will guide your eye into trying to find landmarks that are all but invisible to the untrained eye.
During art history the way drawing lessons has been approached has changed dramatically and shifted from masters who would argue you should be able to draw from knowledge as opposed to observation, and then back. The old masters would be able to construct bodies and faces due to their very deep knowledge of anatomy, while the John Singer Sargents of this world would argue that the less you knew about the subject, the better off you were, relying only on visual perception.
This last tendency probably arose from the realization that you could never deeply know all subjects you wanted to paint, and while old masters limited themselves to drawing few subject matters, the new ones wanted broader subjects. Hence reliance on principles of observation was a better base.
Nowadays things couldn't be more divided, with illustrators and digital concept artists relying on their knowledge and imagination, and classical atelier artists doing the opposite, and going visual, taking all their cues from the real world.
My personal take, and one I try to advocate during my Amsterdam drawing classes, is to learn the principles and then deepen your knowledge on subjects for which your time, interest or technical skills allow. The human face and body would be examples where your knowledge must be deep because of the innate ability we have at perceiving inaccuracies in these subjects. All others subjects can begin with observational approaches which may become deeper if you so choose.
For what it's worht!
Perhaps I can relate to this closely not due to my drawing lessons, but because of another passion in my life, which is to play guitar.
I have been playing for a long time, and after over a decade I have certain dexterity with my fingers, as well as what seems to be a more or less innate ability to hear things correctly. This last factor made me never look for musical education or method. I would listen to songs I liked and learned to play them, having lots of fun in the process and laughing at friends of mine who would attend guitar lessons.
Proper art lessons back then seemed like the most boring and pointless thing. They took away the spontaneity and turned this fun hobby into a boring methodical activity. They introduced effort and consistency into something that I though should be loose and organic.
This is very often the felling we have about drawing lessons and how art should be done.
In fact for some time my natural ear and enthusiasm made it so that I was ahead of all these guys taking endless lessons and learning boring scales and other such things. But then something funny started to happen. The guys taking consistent lessons had built a huge strong foundation and when the time came, their skills skyrocketed, while my playing remained sloppy and repetitive.
It hurts me to say it but this was over 15 years ago, and though my guitar skills have improved dramatically since then, I cannot compete with someone who learned and mastered the principles such as scales, correct picking technique, etc.
Such is the case with drawing lessons and art education in general. You can wing it up to a certain level but unless you learn the principles and learn them well, you will plateau for lack of knowledge if nothing else.
As a concrete example of what this means during drawing and painting, we can take portraits. It is indeed possible to draw and paint faces without any knowledge of anatomy, and to be fair the results may end up quite OK. However, quite OK is not good enough and if you want your portraits to acquire that clean impressive result, learning anatomy and formal portraiture methods is the only way to go.
There is a distinct look and feel to a portrait made by someone with thorough academic drawing education. The knowledge of line, value, planes and anatomy is unmistakable. It simply comes through.
A lot of this has to do with the fact that, deep knowledge of your subject's construction will guide your eye into trying to find landmarks that are all but invisible to the untrained eye.
During art history the way drawing lessons has been approached has changed dramatically and shifted from masters who would argue you should be able to draw from knowledge as opposed to observation, and then back. The old masters would be able to construct bodies and faces due to their very deep knowledge of anatomy, while the John Singer Sargents of this world would argue that the less you knew about the subject, the better off you were, relying only on visual perception.
This last tendency probably arose from the realization that you could never deeply know all subjects you wanted to paint, and while old masters limited themselves to drawing few subject matters, the new ones wanted broader subjects. Hence reliance on principles of observation was a better base.
Nowadays things couldn't be more divided, with illustrators and digital concept artists relying on their knowledge and imagination, and classical atelier artists doing the opposite, and going visual, taking all their cues from the real world.
My personal take, and one I try to advocate during my Amsterdam drawing classes, is to learn the principles and then deepen your knowledge on subjects for which your time, interest or technical skills allow. The human face and body would be examples where your knowledge must be deep because of the innate ability we have at perceiving inaccuracies in these subjects. All others subjects can begin with observational approaches which may become deeper if you so choose.
For what it's worht!
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