Tuesday, October 27, 2009

3rd entry for October 18, 2009




These are two 20-minute studies that ended the evening. I didn't succeed in getting the likeness quite right in the foreshortened view, but succeeded fairly well in the more upright study.
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4 comments:

Andrew said...

I love the mood of the last drawing. The pose looks very natural and authentic. I'm not sure, but the incompleteness of the figure may even add to the unstressed mood.

November 3, 2009 at 12:35 PM
Thomas Hendry said...

It leaves room for a viewer's imagination when not everything is drawn.
Given infinite time, I have a strong temptation to fill every inch of the picture surface with graduated values and a broad value range. I'm not always so happy with how that works out - it can easily seem overworked.

A line can be such a strong element left on its own that way.
Egon Schiele is a longtime exemplar of that for me. Also, locally in Toronto, the painter Robert Markle (who was a teacher of mine) and Claire Weissman Wilks are two artists who use line and lots of open space in drawings very effectively in drawings.

November 3, 2009 at 12:51 PM
Andrew said...

Reminds me of a line from The Art of Figure Drawing by Clem Robins: "...you are to be a poet, not a reporter, when you draw."

November 3, 2009 at 12:55 PM
Thomas Hendry said...

I agree with that to a point: a couple of options as an artistr are to be a poet or a reporter.
human beings and our bodies are short-lived, transitory. to want to report on the sight of a person at a time, in a place, to say: "this is what I saw" in an honest way, I think that is art as well. That is what is at the core of a lot of realist art. Cameras have largely usurped that role, as they do that reportage much more rapidly and accessibly. But aa drawing has a different feel, one we still appreciate.

But poet or reporter, or some blend of both, I think it is probably good to be aware of what you are doing, and what you want to do.

Another good quote (which I've heard attributed to Voltaire & Sartre) is: The surest way to bore people is to tell them everything.

Also, Hemingway said- "What you leave out of a story is as important as what you put in", or words to that effect.

November 3, 2009 at 1:18 PM

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