Drawing skill

[Mani Deli]

Grace Vibbert writes:
>I can see what direction you're coming from, but as someone who never could
>hack music I'm not sure exactly what you mean here... being taught the
>mechanics is certainly important ('this is a 6B, this is how to use an art
gum
>eraser')

Really, is that what your teachers taught you to imagine?

>but I'd hesitate to look into a book on "how to draw in ten easy
>lessons" okay, that's a bit silly, but are you saying there is only one way
to
>draw? Or perhaps there should be classes like "How to draw like Jo Shmo"?

Basics are basics. Everyone learns to write the same way to some degree yet
everyone's handwriting is different.

You might be surprised to know that some old "how to draw in ten easy
lessons " type books have more information than an average art student ever
possesses. The basic fundamentals of drawing are found in engineering and
architectural drawing texts. Present artistic drawing texts for the most part
contain hints and more often than not very mediocre examples. Their
information is aphoristic rather than scientific.

Drawing was taught in previous centuries and everyone who studied that could
produce a drawing that looked like the object and also had some aesthetic
attraction. I have studied drawing texts from a historical point of view along
with student drawings. Victorian ladies drew far better than today's average
student.

The people who learn the bare fundamentals of drawing today are architects and
engineers not art students. There is lots more to learn past this. This fact
is lost on today's art students. They learn a sloganized substitute which I
label "excuse theory." In essence it is a series of clever excuses for why
their drawings seem to look so lousy.

Mani DeLi
..no skill no art

[UpTheRiver]

You're right. But that doesn't seem to phase the whole art biz one bit.
Most architects I know are better drawers than so-called artists. That's
because they were taught detailed conventional perspective, scale, etc. My
feeling is that it's better to learn it all, and then reject it if you
choose. Only provincial people reject it first. Too many people get caught
up in materials & technique and lose sight of seeing. M&T fall into place
once you know how to draw - or render as many engineers & architects do.
Don't confuse rendering with drawing, there is a difference, however all
artists ought to know how to render as a discipline.

[WHannon]

BRAVO

Your comments are right on the money.
I might want to look into Walter Smith an Englishman who founded the
Massachusetts College of Art. He believed that everyone should (and
could)be taught to draw-in the same sense that everyone should be taught
to read, write, and compute.

Bill H.

[Bruce Attah]

Mani Deli wrote:

> You might be surprised to know that some old "how to draw in ten easy
> lessons " type books have more information than an average art student ever
> possesses. The basic fundamentals of drawing are found in engineering and
> architectural drawing texts. Present artistic drawing texts for the most part
> contain hints and more often than not very mediocre examples. Their
> information is aphoristic rather than scientific.

I've been looking at some "how-to" books recently, and I swear the
standard has dropped to a new low. I'm appalled that people who can
barely draw or paint can presume to write such books.

I was particularly dismayed by a book published about a year ago that
claimed to offer students guidance in how to paint like the
impressionists. From the examples in the book, I was tempted to draw
the conclusion that the author had never seen an impressionist painting.
Nevertheless, this book received favourable reviews in at least one
magazine aimed at the hobby artist.

Maybe I should write one of these books -- I'd be rich in no time!

[frank sheldon]

As a watercolor for beginners instructor, I've had to give a a
bare bones drawing course in a time frame of 30 minutes. While
drawing involves perspective, expressive lines etc. etc., I 've
had to distill it down to a single skill. That skill is
"shape"! I had students spend 1/2 hour taking a series of
objects and draw the shapes both positive and negative of the
objects.
Positive would be the objects themselves and negative the space
between the objects. Of course, like penmanship, this must be
practiced evry day.
My 2 cents,
Frank

[Ima Dillo]

In article <RxBIZgl....@delphi.com>, fran...@delphi.com says...

>As a watercolor for beginners instructor, I've had to give a a
>bare bones drawing course in a time frame of 30 minutes.

(text clipped)

>Positive would be the objects themselves and negative the space
>between the objects.

You've hit on something that is extremely important to watercolor
artists, and may benefit other artists when the concept is
understood. I haven't seen the issue of "negative space" discussed
in r.a.f. before. Most WATERCOLOR artists learn early on about negative
spaces as a result of having to paint from "light to dark" which is the
opposite of how other artist paint from "dark to light." As a
teacher, I used to have my first-session watercolor students paint a white
picket fence, the white of the paper being the fence, of course. When
you paint negative spaces with watercolor, I call it "poking holes" in
things--like poking holes in the picket fence. Something else taught
to me years ago by a landscape wc artist--first rule for landscape
watercolor is to leave roofs, roads, and bridges alone until the very
last, as these usually reflect the most light and should be the lightest
elements in a landscape. It is the principal involved that must be
mastered, not the rule itself. Ima Dillo.