Figure drawing - Models vs. Anatomy
Robert
I understand that a lot of developing skill at realistic drawing is developing
your eye.. that is seeing shapes, contours, shades as they really are rather
than interpreting them as symbolic objects (ie. nose, mouth, toe, breast etc.)
So if a person is figure drawing from a model what is the value in the
knowledge of human anatomy? Isn't that contrary to the idea of not drawing
symbolically? Or does anatomy only enter into it if you are conjuring a
figure from your imagination? Are there different schools of thought on this?
Thanks for any responses :)
Robert
Blue Moon
>So if a person is figure drawing from a model what is the value in the
>knowledge of human anatomy?
>Thanks for any responses :)
I've used this analogy in the past with people who ask
that question. Since we are all pretty familiar with
human form -- if nothing else from looking at ourselves
in the mirror -- try drawing another animal without
an understanding of the underlying anatomy. Especially
troublesome for many is the construction of the rear
legs on four-legged animals. No animal will pass
muster among animal lovers if not drawn or painted
accurately. Knowing that the leg is made up of more
than one bone is as essential as knowing the relative
length of the leg to the rest of the figure.
Dik F Liu
>So if a person is figure drawing from a model what is the value in the
knowledge of human anatomy?<
Because otherwise when you look at the model you will only see lumps and bumps.
Knowing the bones and muscles that lay beneath the skin will permit you to draw
more accurately. Besides, studying anatomy is no big chore. There are only 216
bones in the human body. And of the 600+ muscles, you only need to know the
major and superficial ones. These number fewer than 200. It takes a week to
memorize them (but much longer to know their functions and nuances) and then
the knowledge will benefit you for life.
Dik
Charles Eicher
> I have a question for the more experienced artists here.
>
> I understand that a lot of developing skill at realistic drawing is
developing
> your eye.. that is seeing shapes, contours, shades as they really are rather
> than interpreting them as symbolic objects (ie. nose, mouth, toe, breast etc.)
I don't know anyone who draws bodily features as "symbolic objects" except
maybe in comic books. And even so, these caricatures of human forms still
rely on knowledge of human anatomy.
> So if a person is figure drawing from a model what is the value in the
> knowledge of human anatomy? Isn't that contrary to the idea of not drawing
> symbolically? Or does anatomy only enter into it if you are conjuring a
> figure from your imagination? Are there different schools of thought on this?
Even the most rudimentary study of anatomy will improve your drawing
dramatically. For example, there is a reason why daVinci's "Vitruvian Man"
(the man in a circle) is so famous, it outlines basic proportions of the
human body. These proportions are vital to drawing the human figure
correctly. I can vouch for this personally. I always had difficulty drawing
faces well, so I studied cranial anatomy (especially the anatomy of the
eyes, which are often the focus of any portrait) and I finally was able to
see some of the finer structures I had been missing. And my drawing
improved a LOT.
----------------
Charles Eicher
cei...@inav.net
----------------
Bob C
>
> I have a question for the more experienced artists here.
>
> I understand that a lot of developing skill at realistic drawing is developing
> your eye.. that is seeing shapes, contours, shades as they really are rather
> than interpreting them as symbolic objects (ie. nose, mouth, toe, breast etc.)
>
> knowledge of human anatomy? Isn't that contrary to the idea of not drawing
> symbolically? Or does anatomy only enter into it if you are conjuring a
> figure from your imagination? Are there different schools of thought on this?
>
>
Theoretically, I don't think that there is a lot of difference between
seeing the light patterns as 2D shapes and seeing the anatomical
structures as 2D shapes. Neither of these are natural types of "seeing";
they are both skills which must be learned. Learn anatomy and use it
frequently in drawings and you may eventually learn that you can "see"
anatomical structures just as easily and effortlessly as you can "see"
patterns of light and dark.
Do not, however, be confused into thinking that drawing from a knowledge
of anatomy is the same thing as drawing the figure symbolically. The
latter is the mistake which beginners make when they're trying to do
naturalistic renderings without ever having learned how. In the
beginners portrait you will always see over-sized eyes placed too high
on the head (from a naturalistic point of view, of course). This is
because of the importance placed on the eyes, nose, and mouth in
contrast to the importance of the forehead or hair. This is the danger
of interpreting the subject as symbolic objects, but it is a danger that
can be overcome with a knowledge of anatomy as well as learning to see
the patterns of light.
Both skills are necessary to be able to do justice to figure drawing. If
you were to completely eliminate the knowledge of subject and just be
responding entirely to the shapes and patterns, then what is the point
of having even chosen that subject? It is no longer a figure drawing, it
is an exercise in design (which in and of itself can be made into a
wonderful work of fine art but is not really the same thing as figure
drawing).
- Bob C.
zi...@interport.net
I know of several different artistic positions taken on the knowledge
of anatomy.
1. Knowledge of asnatomy is only useful as a starting point for
inventing anatomical structures with metaphoric meaning which can be
seen abstracrtly as such or may be covered with apparently
representational gestures while this antianatomical proportions and
anatomical forms remain the centre of attention. Living artist: None
Who are marvelous at it. Dead ones: Picasso during the bone period and
those elephantine women in the early thirties, Miro before 1925,
Dubuffet, the early Giaometti and those forms showing underneath the
late "perceptual" work , Brancusi, John Storrs, and other modernists
as well as Donatello[think of the proportion of the Gatamelatta],
Giovanni da Bologna, the School of Avignon, Parmigiano, Rosso
Fiorentino, Pontormo, The Late Michelangelo.
2. Knowledge of anatomy is not useful for a painter, because that
knowledge and thimplications an artist knowing it has will stand in
the way of the right way to look at the volume of space around the
model and including him/her in which all the shapes are of equal
importance. Dekoonings democracy of shapes. The artist needs to be
able to follow the process of forgetting objective names and devloping
as the pressures of space and shape push him. This sort of artist will
value the fact that verticals and horizontals break and that an arm or
a leg will be in an unatomical position for pictorial reasons of
process and pictorial development.Living Example: Charles Cajori,
dead examples Cezanne, some Matisse, perhaps, some analytical cubist
painting.
3. Knowledge of anatomy is useful in getting the finest clearest
gestures and simplification of forms since it helps for the artist to
have an idea about what kind of volumes move into each other to form
the boidy, and how those change with position. The anatomy is not a
barrier to construction since the ideal is a finely gesturing human
form which can be felt throughthe paint and choices of volumes, both
inside the fiugre and around the figure. Living artists: Balthus,
Natalie Charkow. Dead Artists Leland Bell, Matisse during the Nice
period, Roualt, Giacometti, Maillol.
4. Anatomy is the basic tool for understanding the forms of the human
body. Once you knoiw it and understand through it and through
observation how these forms interact, it should be possible to
visualize the human body without a model present and develop the forms
spatially and through control of proportion and gesture, meaning. The
otherintersts of forming and considering the spaces surrounding the
figures are equally valuable but will take their place because of the
understanding ofthe artist and his use of the anatomically developed
figure. Live artists: None who are any good at it. Dead: Titian,
Giorgione, Palma Vecchio, Durer, Leonardo, in the Baroque, Poussin,
Rubens.
Whether you believe that anatomy will help you to draw a human form
depends on why you are drawing the form, what you want to express and
what you want to learn. I have known wonderful teachers of several of
these positions.ome of their teachings are preserved in books
aboutthem or by them. Some of them wrote anatomy books. Some, like
Durer wrote books about art which included anatomy in them.
In my opinion, it is best to start with drawing, not anatomy.
Butanything which helps to interpret odd bumps on the frame as parts
of coherent, related solids can't be all bad. So only some at first.
But more ifyou care , or less if you end up in that position. Anatomy
is not an absolute, like every other painter's tool it is up for
grabs. It is an artistic decision to make, not a technical one. There
is not thing as technique separated from idea.
Gabriel
zi...@interport.net
ADELE M. SGRO
when I did figure drawing from the model. I simply drew what I saw as I
saw it. The instructor gave us a time period from ten to twenty minutes
in which to finish a sketch. IMO the knowledge of anatomy is best
learned by practicing figure drawing as much as possible. Not by
learning about the skeleton or bones of the human body...But if some
people need to learn about the human body by seeing how the bones
connect, before drawing a human figure in the correct proportions,
might as well also learn about all the muscles that cover the bones
under the skin.....Medical books have plenty of references.
Adele
Iian Neill
In article <36c32...@news.cadvision.com>, nos...@nowhere.com
If you believe Ted Seth Jacobs - a teacher at the New York Academy of Art - as I do, then most people tend to draw "symbolically", even those artists who have been working at it for years. "Symbolic" in this context refers to our preconceptions of what a face, nose, mouth, or arm should look like - in certain styles of art such "symbolism" is quite obvious, but even in the productions of realists in the 19th and 20th centuries these "symbolic" tendencies are still evident. As the original poster suggested, the best way to get past it is to see (and draw) shapes, contours and shades as they really are - the trick is in making our minds accept what our eyes are telling us. This kind of "symbolism", Jacobs claims, is very ingrained, and has to be "unlearnt" by the artist through life-drawing sessions. He needs to remember that each body is not just a collection of symbols pasted together, but an organic, unique construction.(Robert) wrote: > I have a question for the more experienced artists here. > I understand that a lot of developing skill at realistic drawing is > developing your eye.. that is seeing shapes, contours, shades as they really are rather > than interpreting them as symbolic objects (ie. nose, mouth, toe, breast etc.) I don't know anyone who draws bodily features as "symbolic objects" except maybe in comic books. And even so, these caricatures of human forms still rely on knowledge of human anatomy.
Study of anatomy gives us at least a rough idea of what is going on under the skin - being familiar with it can only help us in appreciating the intricasies of muscles and the expressions they produce - as well as the solid forms of bones under flesh.> So if a person is figure drawing from a model what is the value in the > knowledge of human anatomy? Isn't that contrary to the idea of not drawing > symbolically? Or does anatomy only enter into it if you are conjuring a > figure from your imagination? Are there different schools of thought on this? Even the most rudimentary study of anatomy will improve your drawing dramatically. For example, there is a reason why daVinci's "Vitruvian Man" (the man in a circle) is so famous, it outlines basic proportions of the human body. These proportions are vital to drawing the human figure correctly. I can vouch for this personally. I always had difficulty drawing faces well, so I studied cranial anatomy (especially the anatomy of the eyes, which are often the focus of any portrait) and I finally was able to see some of the finer structures I had been missing. And my drawing improved a LOT.
Incidentally, I did read that Ingres had a profound distaste for anatomy classes - and even said that he did not study it himself! Now, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of my source (which was not an original document), but it would be interesting to see if it was actually true ...
Regards,
Iian Neill.
emat...@tomatoweb.com
Iian Neill <leon...@microtech.com.au> wrote:
> If you believe Ted Seth Jacobs - a teacher at the New York Academy of
> Art - as I do, then most people tend to draw "symbolically", even those
> artists who have been working at it for years. "Symbolic" in this
> context refers to our preconceptions of what a face, nose, mouth, or arm
> should look like - in certain styles of art such "symbolism" is quite
> obvious, but even in the productions of realists in the 19th and 20th
> centuries these "symbolic" tendencies are still evident. As the original
> poster suggested, the best way to get past it is to see (and draw)
> shapes, contours and shades as they really are - the trick is in making
> our minds accept what our eyes are telling us. This kind of "symbolism",
> Jacobs claims, is very ingrained, and has to be "unlearnt" by the artist
> through life-drawing sessions. He needs to remember that each body is
> not just a collection of symbols pasted together, but an organic, unique
> construction.
>
A good account of this is Gombrich. However, he calls it 'schemata' as I
recall. A very good read for anyone interested in learning about drawing.
Gombrich, E. H. 1909-. Art and illusion: a study in the psychology of
pictorial presentation,, by E. H. Gombrich; with 320 illustrations. 3rd ed.
London, Phaidon, 1968. xiii, 388 p. illus
Erik Mattila
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
zi...@interport.net
<leon...@microtech.com.au> wrote:
>
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>
>> In article <36c32...@news.cadvision.com>, nos...@nowhere.com (Robert) wrote:
>>
>> > I have a question for the more experienced artists here.
>> > I understand that a lot of developing skill at realistic drawing is
>> > developing your eye.. that is seeing shapes, contours, shades as they really are rather
>> > than interpreting them as symbolic objects (ie. nose, mouth, toe, breast etc.)
>>
>> I don't know anyone who draws bodily features as "symbolic objects" except
>> maybe in comic books. And even so, these caricatures of human forms still
>> rely on knowledge of human anatomy.
>>
I have known Mr,. Jacobs since the days when our classes were across
the hall from each other. I was doing my pay back class in the Art
Student's League, at that time. It was in the early 1970s.
>If you believe Ted Seth Jacobs - a teacher at the New York Academy of
>Art - as I do, then most people tend to draw "symbolically", even those
>artists who have been working at it for years. "Symbolic" in this
>context refers to our preconceptions of what a face, nose, mouth, or arm
>should look like - in certain styles of art such "symbolism" is quite
>obvious, but even in the productions of realists in the 19th and 20th
>centuries these "symbolic" tendencies are still evident. As the original
>poster suggested, the best way to get past it is to see (and draw)
>shapes, contours and shades as they really are - the trick is in making
>our minds accept what our eyes are telling us. This kind of "symbolism",
>Jacobs claims, is very ingrained, and has to be "unlearnt" by the artist
>through life-drawing sessions. He needs to remember that each body is
>not just a collection of symbols pasted together, but an organic, unique
>construction.
In those days Jacobs was showingat either the Forum Gallery or the
Graham Gallery. I think, itwas Forum [they are both in the same
building]. Mr. Jacobs chosen master is Piero della Francesca, who is a
preanatomical artist. The next generation was the first one to really
get goiung anatomically. Piero makes perfect sense to me pictorially
and his forms ar generally quite sound from the anatomical viewpoint,
but that is not his point. The point of Piero's paintings on a formal
level has to do with simplification and idealization. Neither of
which are greater respecters of anatomy. In the next generation,
Signorelli and Perugino become anatomists and their students Raphael
amnd Michelangelo are evn farther along. There is no way that Either I
or Jacobs would see Michelangelo or Rphael as greater artists than
Piero.
The symbolic versus pictorial view of art is not original with Jacobs.
It comes from the book I have been quoting for different reasons for
years. It is the basis for Franz Boas differentiation between
Northwest Coast and Inuit art and the art which was typical in a
eurocentred culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.
Not drawing Symbolically as something we learn to do as adults is a
curious way of valuing only one strand of Western art above all else,
nowadays. For example the Uruguayan painter Torres-Garcia painted
totally "symbolic" paintings which had a symbolic structure and were
meant to be read as a poem is read. At the same time, he continued to
paint harbor scenes both from and away from the motif [on the same
canvas] in a style which can best vedescribed as rather like Marquet
or Nice Matisse's. He also painted a long serie of odd portraits of
artists out of history among his later works.
Tores Garcia also wrote andpublished long theoretical works in Spanish
which ill no doubtbe translated someday into English.
For a Western modernist artist the choice of facture in figure drawing
you are extolling is a real choice, to be used exclusively or for that
matter only in one part of a painting, or in certain works only.
But if it is used as if it is the only choice then it is
impoverishing.
One more thing, if it is used and the artist using it does not also
know how toi read a space -as Piero, for example, did know, then his
work becomes illustrational work in an archaic style and not serious
art at all. If you read about Piero or you read La Porpettiva
Pingendi of Piero and see his projected heads made from points, and if
you look at the ground planes inscribed with circular movements by his
location of the forms [as in the Queen of Sheba before Solomon, for
example] you will note that he had three interests which cooperated
with each othre [without even mentioning hisa fourt, color]
Simplification, Spatial configuration and the reading of space.
Emphasizing one without the others turns work into flab.
One more thing. You aremerely guessing that Ingres did not believe in
anatomy? Well,m then why don;t you try to count the number of bones
in the spine of the grande odalisque in the Louvre. I forgot how many
extra she has but it is three or four. Also I guess you have still
not looked at the portrait of the Comtesse d'Haussonville at the
Frick. Where is the hidden shoulder? Is it anatomically placed? And
have you ever seen his earlier attempts at that portrait, in paint?
Did you know that his painting of Thetis before Zeus was based on an
illustration from the Iliad by Flaxman? Flaxman is another one. A
great anatomist whose most famous work ignores the anatomy he knows.
Gabriel
>
>> > So if a person is figure drawing from a model what is the value in the
>> > knowledge of human anatomy? Isn't that contrary to the idea of not drawing
>> > symbolically? Or does anatomy only enter into it if you are conjuring a
>> > figure from your imagination? Are there different schools of thought on this?
>>
>> Even the most rudimentary study of anatomy will improve your drawing
>> dramatically. For example, there is a reason why daVinci's "Vitruvian Man"
>> (the man in a circle) is so famous, it outlines basic proportions of the
>> human body. These proportions are vital to drawing the human figure
>> correctly. I can vouch for this personally. I always had difficulty drawing
>> faces well, so I studied cranial anatomy (especially the anatomy of the
>> eyes, which are often the focus of any portrait) and I finally was able to
>> see some of the finer structures I had been missing. And my drawing
>> improved a LOT.
>>
>Study of anatomy gives us at least a rough idea of what is going on
>under the skin - being familiar with it can only help us in appreciating
>the intricasies of muscles and the expressions they produce - as well as
>the solid forms of bones under flesh.
>
>Incidentally, I did read that Ingres had a profound distaste for anatomy
>classes - and even said that he did not study it himself! Now, I cannot
>vouch for the accuracy of my source (which was not an original
>document), but it would be interesting to see if it was actually true
As far as anatomy is concerned, you give one of the various
possibilities only. Because you presume to know the only way that a
true artist out to go. At 69 I think I know better than that. I do
not know what the proper way for any single artist is to go. I do know
that it should be done with thought and awareness of the
possibilities, and that. It cannot be decided intellectually before
the work is done. Any one who is worth her/his salt will learn while
working and will see the direction they have to go in change as a
result of the new knowledge they have gained. Anyone who does it
differently is cutting off the internal learning process and will end
up a dead artist -in the work. All of this should come out of daily
practice at work in the studio for many hours in order to develop into
art. of any consequence.
I do admit you are to provocative to ignore. I wonder when you will
start quoting some more of those people at that school at me -Martha
Erlebacher, Ted Schmidt, or some of Walter's followers. By the way the
most important teacher at that school from the neoclassic viewpoint
was Joe Groell. He has been retired for a while. He had a lot to
offer.
Anatomy is only useful if you know how to look and draw first. After
you have some idea about what you are doing, about proportion and the
color of a line and a whole space, then IF you decide you need it and
you want it some anatomy can be good for you. But the best anatomists
are the ones who tie the anatomy to the surface planes. The worst
would be Barcsay, who has no idea what the surfaces are doing. If you
have an idea what the kind of painting you want to do is like, then
you can decide just how much anatomy in what way, you need. But if
anatomy does not tell you about movement and surface structures it is
only useful if you want to invent figure groupings without a model.
The useful thing would be to look at the work of some of the people
Iian mentions. Is it alive? Does it breathe? Id it inspirational?
Would you like to write a poem about a figure you see there? Or a
fivure grouping? I don't think that it is usually true that people
who can't do can teach very much.
Gabriel
Finder
> I have a question for the more experienced artists here.
>
> I understand that a lot of developing skill at realistic drawing is developing
> your eye.. that is seeing shapes, contours, shades as they really are rather
> than interpreting them as symbolic objects (ie. nose, mouth, toe, breast etc.)
>
> So if a person is figure drawing from a model what is the value in the
> knowledge of human anatomy? Isn't that contrary to the idea of not drawing
> symbolically? Or does anatomy only enter into it if you are conjuring a
> figure from your imagination? Are there different schools of thought on this?
>
> Thanks for any responses :)
>
> Robert
I agree... it does help to "develop" your eye. I feel that both anatomy and
drawing from models are important in that development. A good book you might be
interested in, Robert, is "Master Class in Figure Drawing" by Robert Beverly Hale
(Watson-Guptill Publications/New York). It deals with both subjects. It has
quite a bit of technical anatomy information as it pertains to figure drawing. It
is a great resource for the combination of the two. I found that through the use
of this book and models, my drawing improved, as did my ability to "see".
I hope this helps.
zi...@interport.net
It is always interesting to know who it is that someone is
reccommending to you. Robert Beverly Hale was a member of the board of
the art student's league when their long time anatomy lecturer got
sick anddied. They had no idea wher to get a new one. So Hale
volunteered to learn anatomy and because he would have studied it he
would then be able to teach it.
What wer his credentials? He was curator of modern art at the
Mtropolitasn Museum of Art. Had he been a professional painter before
this? No, he had been a dilletante.
Did he become a professional painter afterwards? Well he did have
some shows. In one of them he drew with a brush, several feet long
from a figure. Of course this produced very messy and expressionistic
looking images. But each line wasbased on anatomy. Yoju could have the
academy and pollock too!
Why is it worth knowing this stuff? Because someone who is going to
teach you anatomy which is then to improve your ability to draw th
figure -hopefully soi that it will make more sense in your paintings
ought to be someone who understands the issues of painting then and
painting now. In order to do that he would have to be a committed
painter whose life had been spent working these things out because of
the need he had to make use of them in his own work. Hale was none of
these. He was a dillettante. He quite his job as unpaid member of the
board, stayed on at the Met, and gave these performance lectures and
then wrote all sorts of supposedly truly knowledgable boioks about
suchbthings as the drawings of the old masters and anatomy.
Does it sound as though he knew things which might be helpful to a
young artist? Maybe, but he also did not know a lot which he should
have known to pretend to authority.
Now that you are not going to his performances and there are a variety
of books to look at for information, why not look at the books written
by artists? Robert Bridgeman whom Hale replaced is not my all time
favorite as an artist, but he fulfills all of the things which Hale
misses on.
And anyhow, when was it agreed that anatomy was so important. It is
true that when some people who have studied anatomy talk they think it
is
.
One year, some time after I was no longer teaching at the League, I
and Leland Bell were called in as jurors of a scholarship show at the
end of the year. We voted privately and presented the group with our
ballots. They were almost identical. And neither of us had any use for
the people who were working figuratively in that school at that time.
We had given almost everything to abstract painters. That was not
because we preferred abstraction in general, but we both preferred
this abstraction to this figuration. It was in the middle of Hale's
tenure as anatomy teacher there. Whatever the kids learned, it
wasn;'t to draw or paint the figure to either of his or my
satisfaction.
Gabriel
-N.
What follows is not a recommendation, as each artist has to discern the
best course of action for themselves, I will simply relate my own
expereince with the study of anatomy.
Anatomy was of help to me: study of the model was important, as was book
study of anatomy, both the more clinical based books and the books using
artist's drawings as an aid. However, by far the most insightful study of
anatomy was the actual work on the cadaver. Not only is the human body
amazing (especially once you strip off the skin and fat), but to actually
get your hands on a cadaver, and work on dissection can be very helpful.
Great inspiration can come simply from handling the cadaver, understanding
better the insertion and connection of musculature. Hands-on with a
doctor, anatomist, and art teacher makes for a good comphrehensive
system. I do not believe I have ever seen anything quite as beautifully
complex as the construction of the human hand, when stripped of skin. I
would NEVER have had such a revelation and understanding by looking at my
own hands from the outside, or by studying textbooks or master drawings.
Years after the fact, it remains visually one of the most potent
structures I have seen. Seeing it for real in 3D is intense. The only
thing I can think of as being better, would be if the corpse could somehow
become animated and strike some poses, move around under its own power
(that and a new odor to replace formaldehyde).
Cheers,
-N.
--
N
To reach me, remove _xxx from my address.
emat...@tomatoweb.com
It makes me think of what's his name -- Chaim Soutine. Since he couldn't get
human cadavers he settled for sides of beef. He was very unpopular in the
Basque villiage where he lived and painted, after the beef began to ripen in
his studio.
My own experience with life drawing has been ok, but I'm not overjoyed with
it. It's good reference, of course, but basically I like to draw out of my
head. Here's an interesting note. I had a friend who was a psychologist and
one of the tests she administered was the "Draw A Person" test, and she was
able to ferret all sorts of detain about one's emotional life from the
product. She gave me the test, but I raised the issue that I was a trained
artist with much intellectual override to a purly spontaneous drawing, and
she said it didn't make a bit of difference, since I would enevitably
inscribe all sorts of details about traumatic injuries, emotional content,
etc etc. She was right, I was amazed at what she could determing from the
two little drawings I produced.