I accidentally skipped a chapter today and leapt to the one about Perspectives. I learned about the concept of Vanishing Points and Converging Lines. Here's our library (minus many details like the view outside the window, the blinds, and the carpet.) Those cabinets frustrated me the most, and there is an obvious lack of shadow grading. Why can't I see the different levels of darkness clearly?
My one-point perspective
Our library with a sofa, a TV on the left, and a reclining office chair
I was wondering why I found it hard to start this, considering they were mostly vertical lines; but when I went back to the chapter I had missed, I understood -- it was the lesson on Basic Unit. Now I've read it, and I started to do the exercise on drawing negative spaces, but my brain and eyes must be tired, because I wasn't progressing well. It also involved my ultimate waterloo: proportions. This was the first exercise that required me to scale up the drawing, and as expected, I was struggling. I'll continue the drawing tomorrow. P.S. Drawing is not easy.
Quick update regarding my progress on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The chapter I'm on (6) talked about edges, and it taught a technique called Contour Drawing, which encouraged focusing on capturing the details of a subject by never taking your eyes off it. Not even to look at what you're drawing. That was fairly mind boggling, and I'm not sure if it did anything for me, but I hope it did.
I just finished a section that introduced the concept of a picture plane, an imaginary "window" artists look through; a perspective that allows you to copy the 3 dimensional world onto a 2 dimensional surface through drawing. Two artists, Brunelleschi and Alberti, were first in history to have recorded speaking of it, but Holbein and Van Gogh also employed it in their work. Since I'm not an artist (yet,) my teacher (aka the author) instructed me to create a picture plane, to help with the visual effect of foreshortening. I didn't have all the materials that the first chapter required me to gather; so I went to a craft shop this morning, bought a graphite stick, fibreglass pane, and the prescribed pencils, prepped the viewfinder and picture plane, and got to work on the exercises.
My second attempt at drawing my hand holding a glue stick
It's not the best, but I was pretty pleased that I came up with this (please refer to my first drawings to understand my amazement.) Either all the explanations and exercises have been very effective in changing the way I see (I'd like to think so,) or the combination of viewfinder + crosshairs + graphite stick are magical. I'd never understood how to shade before, but when I was instructed to "erase the highlights and darken the shadows," this just happened.
Things I learned from this activity include 1) smudging just enough when erasing an error (or no amount of rubbing will even out my toned ground) and 2) darkening the edges a little more. I'd never spent this much time and energy on trying to draw something realistic, and now I wonder if I'd been able to manage if I just did; but it just reinforces that time and patience are definitely important factors in this creation process.
Almost a week since I did the first drawing exercises, following instructions from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I'm now on chapter 4. (I switched editions, and "The Definitive, 4th Edition" is a friendlier, less scholarly read.) This chapter has the exercise that Chris had described and got me curious: copying an image upside down. The book proposes that seeing an image right-side up automatically triggers our Left Brain to assign labels to everything, and with those labels come our own interpretations of things based on personal experiences. What it wants is for the reader to try engaging the imaginative Right Brain, ignoring the analytical Left Brain, so that we draw what we see, just as we see it, free of our own opinionated interferences.
SPOILER ALERT
If you want to try reading the book and doing all the exercises, you may not want to see what I drew, so you'll be a clean slate when you do it yourself. Although, the author did share an anecdote of a student who did it twice by mistake, still producing the desired results even if s/he had already seen the original image. Proceed with discernment =)
The book presented a portrait of Igor Stravinsky, drawn by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, oriented upside down. My brain immediately tried to recognise the picture, but I tried to suppress it. So although I knew it was of a person, I tried to see it as nothing but lines and curves, as I was supposed to. The average duration of activity was 45 minutes, but I took almost 2 hours, starting at 11:37 am and ending at 1:20 pm. I made two attempts, the first I discarded almost halfway, because I was unhappy with my attention to proportion. Being more cognizant of that weakness, I tried again. When I was finished, I turned both drawings and looked at them right-side up for the first time. I was pretty pleased with the similarity I achieved... I mean, that's a freaking Picasso!
My version of Picasso's Igor Stravinsky
The original: Portrait of Stravinsky by Picasso (photo taken from Wikipedia)
Having now done the first few exercises, I realised that my biggest disadvantage was and is my impatience. Considered a Left Brained trait, I was just too aware of time ticking away, thinking about how badly I must be doing, and I gave up on the tasks very quickly, not wanting to fix parts I could see weren't precise. As mentioned, my spatial abilities are not very sharp and I have difficulty with proportions; so in my drawing, Stravinsky's (anatomic) right shoulder is higher than the left, and the hands became chunkier to compensate at that point (I copied from top to bottom of the lopsided image.) I also made him look mad, oops! But like Dory said, "Just keep swimming;" and yesterday, while talking to Macy about calligraphy, she was encouraging me (as she so often does) to keep practicing. Practice, indeed, makes progress.
If there's anything that can be done one day at a time, it's learning. I advocate the thinking that anything can be learned, even skills that people insist are dependent on talent, like singing, dancing, and writing. Sure, talent makes it so that there is a predisposition to a skill, but with enough attention to the right procedure and plenty of practice, I think every skill can be developed.
I've always envied visual artists, those that can replicate the world around us, and especially those that can transfer their own imaginings onto canvas. I've often wondered how it would be like if I could just draw or paint all my thoughts! Wild.
I don't think I'm terrible at drawing, in fact I can draw enough to give semblances to my target images; but I have obvious problems with proportions and depth (and, well, patience.) Last weekend, over sandwiches and beer, my friends and I got to talking about arts and crafts. I somehow had shared that I wasn't good at visual arts, and was frustrated by drawing. Chris started to excitedly describe a book, whose author supposedly guarantees that everyone can learn how to draw, and draw well. He gave a very rough gist, but enough to pique my interest, because here I am two days later, on the third chapter.
After a short introduction on the basis of the teaching technique (which read like a research journal or some other academic paper,) it went on to listing the materials needed for the drawing exercises. The first exercise, however, only needed a pencil and paper. I had to draw a 1) self-portrait, 2) a person from memory, and 3) my hand, to serve as a point of comparison when tracking my progress (a ka, "before" drawings. Forgive the scans, I recycled lyric sheets from past productions.)
Self-Portrait: It looks like a person, but it doesn't look like me
Person from memory: Ryan, who ended up looking like Marcos =/ So bizarre, I'd just seen him minutes before, but I couldn't remember a single detail vividly when I tried to bring his face to mind
My hand: strangely disfigured
I think I've proven a point about my drawing skills, or obvious lack of it. I'm hoping I belong to the demographic that this technique works on, and that I'll actually see improvement in my "after" drawings. In the meantime, I'll document this entire project for posterity. I've been consciously working on my visual creativity lately, and I mentioned having dabbled in food styling a few weeks ago. Here is the first finished product, as posted on the Chef's Classics Facebook page. It took a leap of faith in myself to accept that project, long hours in the kitchen studio to get things right, and what a great feeling to see it come to fruition. I have so many things to refine, like my taste and my eye for composition; but what's important is I tried it, I learned from it, and I'm willing to do better next time.
