Master Drawing Copy, my final piece and an end to 2020.
I have been investigating the drawings of Renaissance artists studying their techniques, the brief being, to create a direct copy. From day one I was concerned with the importance of the speed and technique of mark making. If I was to learn anything and assimilate some of their techniques into my own style, I would not be satisfied by creating a slavish visual copy, slowly drawn. This disregard for the speed of the drawing would ignore the dynamic of the ‘action’ of drawing and the essence of the work would be lost.
For this reason I spent hours with scraps of paper experimenting with mark making, revised the skeleton, bone shapes, thinking structurally, then moved on to muscle, eyes, ears, nose, thinking volumetrically, with the idea that familiarisation with the basic form would improve my fluidity of drawing with a convincing speed/movement, less hindered by replication. All that before moving on to looking at artists!
It was useful to consider Luca Cambiaso who constructed the body in blocks each body part having front/rear/side/top and bottom planes that when shaded, based on direction of light, offered a sense of volume and orientation in space. This helped me not to lose sight of the posture in the early stages.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo seems to create a quick preparatory line sketch and uses a wash of two tonal values to identify the volume of a form and relationship between different forms shaded or in relationship to each other.
Leonardo Da Vinci, the more you study his technique the more you realise he deserves his reputation. If you look closely at ‘storm breaking over’, Valley circa 1500, da Vinci appeared to start his drawings in the foreground and work to the rear, this maintained solidity of foreground forms without a confusion of lines in the rear. He uses hatching in multiple ways, following contours of the land, creating tonal variations and filling spaces between objects to give a sense of depth. Softer, narrower lines in the distance offering an atmospheric perspective and shift between width of line and density of line spacing to create tonal variation and movement.
Honore Daumier. Oh, Daumier with his judicious use of line, he seems to begin with tentative, adjustable marks in charcoal/pencil layering up with ink on the more dominant lines of the form leaving the charcoal to recede into the distance. His lines twist and turn, enough to create a sense of strength and dynamic of form whilst crossing lines at the narrowest points on a limb offering a fragility and ‘snapability’. Finally, he blocks in with washes of ink to create volume and light fall.
Probably my least favourite artist I studied was Durer, his Germanic precision and symmetry of line width and spacing creating chiselled rigid features of perfection drove me insane but there are things to be learnt in unexpected places.
I warmed slightly to the somewhat scruffier line work of the Belgian Bruegel, less precision more variation in pressure and a mishmash of dots and lines offering a more organic, eccentric image.
Then I found, Isidore Pills with her rapidly orchestrated fluid charcoal lines of varying pressure, sparing use of white clustered on the highlights and the disappearance of line at points on the borders of the form replaced with blocks of white chalk. The juxtaposition of blended stumping of charcoal against harder hatched lines and the subtle transitions of tonal value against the harsh contrast creating a sense of smooth undulations of the flesh and sharper contours of the bony prominences.
Jean August Dominique Ingres, who can render the most subtle tonal values to define facial features through layered diagonal hatching.
Finally my all-time favourite Rembrandt, for whom, all I can say is, what is there not to love.
Let’s move on I have said a lot of this in previous posts, in this post I wanted to offer a broad process timeline. Quite honestly, I could have spent another year studying these drawings, but time was running out and my master copy submission was due at the end of December. Taking into consideration my original concerns regarding rendering a slavish copy my first thoughts were, why not choose a drawing to copy and render it in a style that paid homage to a number of artists without being a direct copy. Then, in the space of a conversation with Jac, this moved on to, why not render a painting as a drawing. The first painting that came to mind was Rembrandt's, ‘The Jewish Bride’.
My initial thoughts were to share images of the stages of my drawing of 'The Jewish Bride', pointing out areas that demonstrated my interest in a specific artist…… the mere thought of this task left me staring at my work bench for ages. I’m unsure whether I was daunted by this idea, lazy and couldn’t be bothered or just didn’t feel like chewing the cud now that the work is done. Whatever the reason it’s just not going to happen.
The artists are in there, some lost within the layers, I found myself talking to them as I drew. I asked Ingres what he thought of my subtle faces, would Cambiaso be happy with multi-faceted shapes in the cuff of the brides sleeve, would Rembrandt be proud of the layering, fixing, layer, fixing to create the deep textures. I would like to say a posthumous thankyou to you all. I used the following media: heavy duty deckle edged watercolour paper, graphite, (pencil, powder stick), charcoal, (willow, pressed, powder), chalk, (white and grey), ink, wax and gesso.
You may have noticed that this drawing of a painting has some compositional adjustments. The more I looked at the original, the more disturbed I became by the disrespectful location of the grooms hand with his leering gaze and his brides timid discomfort. Whilst this might have been acceptable in the 15th century, where the wife was considered to be the property of the husband, I just couldn’t bring myself to draw this, so made adjustments that offered a sense of equality. I adjusted arm/hand positions and rendered a more loving, respectful gaze upon a wife with greater dignity and control, I am sure Rembrandt would understand this contemporaneous adjustment.
Here ends 2020 a thoroughly unforgetable year, I wish you all a health and freedom and time with friends ad family in 2021.