There are many artists that claim really great artists never use or used a CONSTRUCTION METHOD in their drawings--meaning they never conceived the forms as simple shapes. Our good friend MICHELANGELO (who I think we can all agree is pretty great) begs to differ! The conté drawing of the Libyan Sibyl for the Sistine Chapel (1508-12) is one of the most famous drawings in history. As is the case in most Renaissance drawings, its a study for the Chapel fresco. If we take even a casual look at the drawing, we notice the construction lines across the less finished wrist and hand (the right side hand). There we see a construction line showing the wrist being conceived as a tube. There are certainly other areas where our friend has drawn free-form without a lay-in, most notably the secondary analysis of the shoulder blade and rib area. But, every part of the drawing works so beautifully because if we laid tracing paper over them, we could sketch out a simple solid conception. (Try it with the features) This has to be the case in any realistic work as it turns out. Our mind works, sees, by way of a mental process called CLOSURE. We are wired to make sense of the world, physically, morally, in every way. Closure is fills the gaps. If you draw disconnected dots in a circular pattern, I will close those gaps for you. I will complete the circle for you. If those dots dont cohere properly the circle fails. And I am left confused, disappointed, etc. The same goes for figure drawing. If we cant successfully connect the various lines and smudges into an appropriate solid, your drawing breaks down and we dont feel it. This isnt surprising. The bones and the muscles do have shapes (the skull is egg-like for example) and since we will never work with the detail and sophistication of nature, we will being simplifying them. If we have an aesthetic intention, well simplify them with that purpose. So it makes perfect sense to work in simplified solids. Now, does the lay-in/constructed method have its drawbacks? Yup, yup, and yup! But, more often its the teacher and/or the student that is creating the limitations. And there are a tom of ways to use the construction method to your advantage. You could draw in a completely free-form method and then, come back to double check that it all rings true -- that we feel it. Or you could take the constructed style of say a Rubens (with his endless egg-forms) and throw the closure out of whack like Modigliani did! Now, you have the two sides of the egg off-kilter. Many possibilities. Constructing your artwork, in effect sculpting it, on the page is not for everyone or every style. But, if you really want to understand what your marks are doing CONCEPTUALLY and doing to your audience, studying constructed forms is a must. Start looking at your favorite artists with tracing paper in hand and see what you can see. And dont forget to look at the Moderns. They had an eye for it too. Enjoy! Steve Huston
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:18:38 +0000
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