My Two Worlds Collide (extensively edited from my unfortunate previous post)

Over a few posts recently I shared my amazement at the precision, power and eloquence of so many writers of the 19th century and previous - qualities that have largely disappeared from writing today. I've since discovered that one of the major reasons for that precision, power and eloquence is due to the type of education that was available in those times - built around what's sometimes called the Trivium, or the Classical three-tiered system of  Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric.  Grammar - the building blocks of words and sentences; Aristotelian Logic, which allows you to ascertain the validity and truthfulness of statements; And Rhetoric - the art of persuasive speaking or writing. An important part of education of this type is that it strongly emphasizes how these various elements interact with each other and connect up as a whole to strengthen each other and to render the student clear, precise, and persuasive. Most modern education has instead treated individual subjects as if they're completely separate and have no connection with any of the other subjects being taught. The Classical educational approach has a tendency to create holistically connected students who are fully capable of continuing their own self-education after leaving the school system, whereas modern education tends to leave students bored and underachieving, and to turn them out into the world woefully ill-prepared in terms of critical thinking ability, literacy, and creativity.

So, the Trivium-style curriculum is one thing I've been avidly pursuing recently, through a lot of web searching and a lot of reading. Meanwhile, I'm also digging ever deeper into that massive stack of painting related books shown in my previous post (which has grown somewhat since then). All of these books cover material from the 19th century and previous.

And I began to notice a repetition of certain words and certain ideas across both stacks of books - the painting-related stack and the classical educational stack.  In both I keep running into a strong emphasis on passion, imagination, skill, and intuition - both on the part of artists in the creation of paintings and on the part of students and writers when they create papers or books or essays. In fact the similarities go beyond just that - they also include the idea that a work should be cohesive conceptually - that a single overriding idea should be at the heart of it and should inform each aspect of it - that idea itself often being imaginative or passionate.

I was quite surprised to discover this link between my 2 concurrent lines of inquiry. Originally when I started looking into the Trivium program, I had no inkling that it was connected in any way with the old-school painting approaches I've been investigating. Though as I recall, I did discover the Trivium originally through an Amazon email, so it was probably targeted at me due to my recent searches and purchases there. To be clear though, Amazon didn't send me an email including the Trivium book as a recommended item, but I found it while pursuing a different book they did recommend - though offhand now I don't remember what it was. Oh, yes I do - it was a book about reading the Classics - which books and authors one should read from the literature of the past. So apparently I went on some kind of list at Amazon for people interested in old-school schooling and painting.

As it stands now, my impression is that this type of education, and the societies that approved of and encouraged it - turned out people of a broad and deep education who were very conversant in matters of imagination and passion as well as logic, grammar, and persuasive capability; and in fact those qualities were embraced and nurtured throughout schooling, and likely at home as well, assuming the parents had the same kind of education.

The result of this happy collision - it turns out my 2 lines of interest are actually not as unrelated as I thought, and in fact I'm finding that in reading about the Trivium education system I glean important insights into the way Romantic painters must have thought. As I mentioned in a recent post, the artists were constantly attending lectures and speeches, reading books, and discussing the new ideas in art and in human thought.

And I apologize for my rather old-fashioned turns of phrase in this post - I've been reading all this very old-world stuff, much of it Victorian, and it's hard not to write like that myself just now. Hopefully I get over that, while still increasing my precision, logic and persuasive powers.

More of What I'm Reading

My most recent book acquisitions,

.. And my Kindle list from Amazon. The Kindle is the plain black book on top of the stack.

I already mentioned some of these in a recent post, just wanted to get them all up in picture form. Of all of these, the only one so far I haven't cared much for is Key Writers on Art From Antiquity to the 19th Century, and that mainly because it's just a series of too-short blurb style quotations and paraphrasings, many of which would doubtless be much better presented in full or in longer excerpts. It came across like Readers' Digest; MTV-Style Sound-Byte Edition - Presented by Short Attention Span Theater.

I have yet to start in on The Brandywine Tradition, which covers Howard Pyle's illustration school and its many famous students like N C Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Harvey Dunn, Violet Oakley, Elizabeth Shippen Green and on and on. That same material is covered in the big orange Howard Pyle book, and from the quick scan I did through the Tradition book, in much the same wording. I suspect one is pretty much lifted from the other.

I'm taking a special interest in Pyle and his teachings since he was the father of American Illustration and launched pretty much the whole shebang. As a committed Romantic he advocated imagination in illustration work, as opposed to strict representationalism - in fact he told his students they should 'live in the picture'.

The Visual Language of Drawing is a series of interviews with some of the excellent instructors at the Art Students League of New York. It emphasizes much the same approach as the Robert Fawcett book I talked about a few posts back, about learning to see by drawing from life and from memory a lot. I love all these books I'm finding lately that de-emphasize the mechanical concept of form - the human body presented as a mannequin, and instead emphasize it as a vital and expressive living thing. Also emphasis on the intuitive development of form sense that happens with a lot of drawing from life, and can't be developed any other way.

Looking at the list of Kindle books, you can see I've been leaning toward what in the past was referred to as an education in the liberal arts. The term still exists today, but it means something quite different - much fuzzier and vaguer, with the most vital aspect removed. Just as a teaser, here's part of a comment for The Trivium:

"To know what you know, and to know what you do not know. That is true knowledge."
-Confucius
Logic was invented in ancient Greece circa 300 B.C. as a systematic method by which free Greeks could identify deliberate deception and/or errors in reasoning. Neither the Greeks nor, later, the Romans considered it wise to teach logic to common slaves, for obvious reasons. The teaching of classical logic was removed from the US public school system over 150 years ago, and has been systematically suppressed by the media, for exactly the same reasons.

The Trivium is the Latin term for the 3 R's of the ancient Liberal Education - Reading, (w)riting and Reckoning (or Reasoning). Note - not 'Rithmetic. The Trivium consists of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. Taken together as a whole, they allow a person to read and write clearly, analyze ideas, reason correctly, and present arguments logically without committing the common logical fallacies that distort the thoughts of most people (and that are committed deliberately by sophists and con artists). A few of these fallacies are:

• Ad Hoc attacks - insulting the other party rather than engaging with their arguments
• Appeal to Authority - citing "experts" without checking the validity of their ideas
• Straw Man argument - creating an oversimplified and incorrect idea of the opponent's actual point and then attacking that, rather like burning an idea in effigy

All of this taken in toto, as a functioning whole, renders a person capable of evaluating ideas on their own terms and discerning truth from falsehood (AKA critical thinking skills). In other words, it's a unified system of education designed to create intelligent self-sufficient individuals who are then capable of continuing their own self-education thanks to the system of reasoning they've developed.

My favorite of the whole bunch is The Search for Form in Art and Architecture. 

Reconsidering Frazetta

 Frazetta is one of the most well known artists of our time, and not only for his art. He's also known for the very colorful stories he tells about himself. About his remarkable athletic prowess and about his background as an artist. Some of his claims in fact are so remarkable that they boggle the imagination - for instance the story of when he was a youth and was walking on a sidewalk beside a picket fence. He was very angry about something - I don't recall what, but so steamed that he saw red, and apparently without realizing what he was doing he ran the leading edge of his hand along the fence, hitting each picket so hard that he broke them all! He said he didn't even realize he had done that until he was past the fence and looked back at it.

His mythology is a huge part of Frank's image, and far be it from me to want to besmirch that, but certain things have come to my attention that I believe call for a reconsidering of some of his claims. I'm not concerned with the claims of his incredible athletic feats - but I do want to set the record straight about his fabled refusal to use photo reference (to draw or paint from photos) and his ridiculously short period of training as an artist - both of which set up unrealistic expectations in admiring young fans who then believe they should be able to do it the way he did, and are in for a rude awakening when that proves impossible. If an art student refuses to work from photo reference or believes that just a few short years of formal art training in childhood is enough to turn them into a word class artist, then they're likely to really botch their training and come out the other side without necessary skills and knowledge, thus sabotaging their chances. And yes folks, I used to believe the claims - in fact I have promoted some of them on this blog.

One of his well known claims is that his only formal art training consisted of a few years under Michel Falanga, I believe between the ages of 8 and 12. But this item from Roy Krenkel's Wiki page indicates otherwise:

"After WWII, he (Krenkel --- Darkmatters) attended Burne Hogarth's classes at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, which became the School of Visual Arts. There he met a group of young cartoonists, including Joe Orlando, Frank Frazetta and Al Williamson."--- From Wikipedia's Roy Krenkel page

So it seems the maestro was concerned with creating his own legend. Playing the same game of self-promotion that big name fine arts gallery painters are known for - the ones who sell themselves rather than letting their work sell itself. Of course Frank's work is easily strong enough to sell not only itself but countless paperback fantasy books, and to literally redefine the heroic fantasy painting genre permanently. I don't know exactly why he felt compelled to self-promote so strongly - maybe he was insecure about his ability to get by strictly on his undeniable talent, or maybe he just thought every little bit helps - or maybe it was just a part of his nature to mythologize himself. I suspect that's at least a large factor.

And here's a comment I ran across recently on David Apatoff's Illustration Art blog (yes, I seem to be mentioning it in every post lately - hey, it's currently my mainline for info and edutainment, ok?):

David Apatoff said..."One of the things I really enjoyed about Comic-Con was the discussion of photo reference by working artists... in a panel about Jeffrey Jones, one artist (correction - not an artist; it was Louise Simonson, Warren editor and former wife of Jeffrey Jones, later married to Walt Simonson --- Darkmatters) talked about how Frazetta traumatized a generation of artists by claiming he never used reference. This artist (Simonson) said, "I know for a fact that Frazetta used reference. I don't know why he would say a thing like that, but a lot of younger artists who looked up to him, such as Jeff Jones, thought they were supposed to be able to paint like that from their imaginations, without any reference. It set back their work, as they tried and tried. They thought there was something wrong with them. And gradually they all went back to using reference." 

"I am one of those who sees no problem with the use of reference, as long as it is kept in proper perspective (like all other art tools). I agree there are many types of pictures best created by relying on memory. We see them, for example, in Frazetta's loose and free flowing pen and ink drawings or his simpler, monolithic figure paintings. However, there are other pictures that will inevitably look stilted and artificial without the benefit of reference. I've seen about half a dozen instances where Frazetta used photo reference, and he seemed to have a good sense for when it was required (for example, with the tighter drawings for the story, "Squeeze Play"). But every once in a while, you can see pictures where he tried to fake his way through without reference (The Disagreement, for example, or Conan the Destroyer before he went back and repainted it, or Conan the Indomitable) and you can see the limits of memory, even for a master." 

8/01/2011 1:55 AM (< direct link to the comment)

Unfortunately I've been unable to relocate it, but there was another comment on a different thread (no idea which one) where one of the readers - as I recall it was an illustrator - said he knew of an illustrator in Frazetta's heyday who was retiring and selling off studio equipment and resources, and had sold a massive morgue file to Frazetta. A morgue file is a collection of photographs used as reference by artists, and this one was filled to overflowing with bodybuilder reference. I tried searching the blog to relocate this info, but apparently the search function on Blogger doesn't include comments.


It isn't that I want to discredit Frazetta - he's a hero of mine - it's just that I was one of those artists who were lead to believe you could get results like Frazetta's without needing reference. I want to try to stop the damage to what small extent I can through my little blog - maybe some other artists can learn the truth before they waste their training period trying to do without reference or skimp on training.

On the clarity and power of 19th century writing concerning art - focus on John Ruskin

This is a followup to my previous post, about Romanticism and Aesthetics and the many writers who have contributed to them - so many in the 19th century. I want to post a segment of one of John Ruskin's articles just to show the great care with which he delineates his points and elaborates on them. Its very rare to find such deep thinking, so eloquently articulated, in any time or place. Strangely though, there was a whole lot of it going on in the 1800's (aka the 19th century). I'll expound a bit on my thoughts as to why that is after the excerpt. This comes from Ruskin's Of the Pathetic Fallacy, a chapter in his book Modern Painters vol 2. After the excerpt is a link to the entire chapter online, in case it whets the appetite for more. 

"Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words quite out of our way, we may go on at our ease to examine the point in question— namely, the difference between the ordinary, proper, and true appearances of things to us; and the extraordinary, or false appearances, when we are under the influence of emotion, or contemplative fancy; false appearances, I say, as being entirely unconnected with any real power or character in the object, and only imputed to it by us.
For instance —

• The spendthrift crocus,

• bursting through the mould  

• Naked and shivering,

• with his cup of gold.

This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The crocus is not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron. How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads that it is anything else than a plain crocus?
It is an important question. For, throughout our past reasonings about art, we have always found that nothing could be good, or useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless untrue. And what is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being so. 

§ 5. It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this fallacy is of two principal kinds. Either, as in this case of the crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real expectation that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused by an excited state of the feelings, making us, for the time, more or less irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy we shall have to speak presently; but, in this chapter, I want to examine the nature of the other error, that which the mind admits when affected strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke— 

• They rowed her in across the rolling foam—
• The cruel, crawling foam.

The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the 'Pathetic Fallacy'. 

§ 6. Now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy as eminently a character of poetical description, and the temper of mind in which we allow it as one eminently poetical, because passionate. But, I believe, if we look well into the matter, that we shall find the greatest poets do not often admit this kind of falseness — that it is only the second order of poets who much delight in it. 

Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron' as dead leaves flutter from a bough', he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that these are souls, and those are leaves; he makes no confusion of one with the other. But when Coleridge speaks of

• The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 

• That dances as often as dance it can,

he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about the leaf : he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not; confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with merriment, and the wind that shakes it with music. Here, however, there is some beauty, even in the morbid passage; but take an instance in Homer and Pope. Without the knowledge of Ulysses, Elpenor, his youngest follower, has fallen from an upper chamber in the Circean palace, and has been left dead, unmissed by his leader, or companions, in the haste of their departure. They cross the sea to the Cimmerian land; and Ulysses summons the shades from Tartarus. The first which appears is that of the lost Elpenor. Ulysses, amazed, and in exactly the spirit of bitter and terrified lightness which is seen in Hamlet, addresses the spirit with the simple, startled words:—
Elpenor! How camest thou under the shadowy darkness? Hast thou come faster on foot than I in my black ship?

Which Pope renders thus:—

• 0, say, what angry power Elpenor led 

• To glide in shades, and wander with the dead? 

• How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined, 

• Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?

I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in the nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! And yet how is it that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been pleasant to us in the other instances?

 § 7. For a very simple reason. They are not a pathetic fallacy at all, for they are put into the mouth of the wrong passion — a passion which never could possibly have spoken them — agonized curiosity. Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter; and the very last thing his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest in anywise what was not a fact. The delay in the first three lines, and conceit in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the most frightful discord in music. No poet of true imaginative power could possibly have written the passage.

Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy has no discord in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without farther questioning, I will endeavour to state the main bearings of this matter. 

§ 8. The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as I said above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully with what is before them or upon them; borne away, or over-clouded, or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or less noble state, according to the force of the emotion which has induced it. For it is no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them; and it is in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they choose. But it is still a grander condition when the intellect also rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts of the passions; and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating; even if he melts, losing none of his weight.
So, then, we have the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing else than itself—a little flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associations and passions may be, that crowd around it. And, in general, these three classes may be rated in comparative order, as the men who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, and the poets of the first; only however great a man may be, there are always some subjects which ought to throw him off his balance; some, by which his poor human capacity of thought should be conquered, and brought into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so that the language of the highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor, resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker things. 

§ 9. And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration."

Of the Pathetic Fallacy by John Ruskin @ OurCivilization.com

I find that reading material like this can have several beneficial effects, and perhaps a few ill ones. For the ill - unfortunately it can perpetuate one into that vernacular frame of mind verily similar unto the Victorian prose itself - aka after reading a bunch of this stuff, I want to write like them dudes do. But as for the beneficial effects - for one it puts you into a slower mindset, more like the pace people must have lived at in those times. In that sense it's very meditative.
Also, after spending so long ruminating deeply on a single idea and covering it from several different vantage points as the writers of the 19th century tended to do, I find myself more apt to think similarly. There's a seriousness of tone and a depth and breadth of thought that's extremely rare to encounter anywhere today in our high speed sound byte era when flippant platitudes tend to pass for thought.

And finally, it's very gratifying to find someone marking out and throughly exploring ground that is in between the extremes - on an issue that could so easily be polarizing. Ruskin is against the excesses of Romanticism, but he doesn't just take a broad stand against it in its totality; instead he's very careful to explain precisely what it is that bothers him about it, while still allowing that when poetic license is used in certain ways, even when taken to an extreme, it is allowable and in fact admirable. Because of this, he can't be said to be exactly against Romanticism, but rather very careful to elaborate on which elements of it he likes and doesn't like, and for exactly what reasons.
According to his own categories, I would consider Ruskin to be a poet of the first stripe. Possibly an inspired genius, though I haven't read enough of his work yet to make a call like that.

 
And he was far from alone. The 19th century produced a plethora of writers and thinkers of the same caliber. It seems to have been one of those shining moments in history when a civilization rose to glittering heights, which always seem to be followed closely by a downslide - in this case Modernism shading over into Postmodernism, leading us up to our current day. There must have been a perfect storm of factors to produce a time of such excellence. Undoubtedly the education was far superior to our own dumbed down public school system, and in addition the culture must have fostered and encouraged deep thought. 

They didn't have the array of mass media that we do today - bread and circuses to distract us constantly from meditation on serious issues. When they wanted to stay in contact with someone long distance, they wrote letters, and they didn't use txt spk. They took pride in correct grammar and sentence structure - literacy was a point of pride. Conscious thought is carried out almost entirely through language, and being adept in language allows one to be adept at thinking clearly. Illiteracy and self-imposed limitations on it essentially limits thought. 

What I'm Reading

I've recently mentioned several books of art instruction here on the blog, but this time I want to cover some different territory. And I've discovered it all thanks to my still ongoing perusal of David Apatoff's Illustration Art blog - specifically by following up on things said, mostly by one Kev Ferarra, in the comments section.  The discussion there is on a very different level to what I've encountered anywhere else, though certain threads at Conceptart do occasionally come close - usually ones where Mr. Ferarra has taken part. The guy is definitely a modern day Renaissance Man, or more properly a modern day Romanticist of the first stripe. And now, having run across so many of his posts, I've developed an understanding of where his extensive knowledge and theoretical framework come from.

To cut right to the chase, it's from extensive reading into aesthetics as well as writings about art by some of the great thinkers of history, many of whom are themselves artists. Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the arts, graced by such thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Hume, Schiller, Nietszche,  Schopenhauer, and many more. I've hit up Project Gutenberg and filled a few folders with the works of many of these esteemed authors, and have started to read a couple of them with a mix of anticipation and dread - dread because of the often impenetrable terminology. In frustration at one point while reading Nietszche's Birth of Tragedy, I highlighted every term in a paragraph that I didn't understand, and there were literally only abut 4 words left unmarked! Most of it isn't that bad, but that exercise did make me decide that I needed to find some kind of Dictionary of Aesthetics and possibly an Introduction to it as well to help noobs like me find their way through these thorny thickets.

I wasn't able to find a Dictionary of Aesthetics specifically, but I did find this nifty online Dictionary of Philosophy, and since aesthetics is a subset of philosophy, that helps. Still many terms left undefined that the writers assume a reader will know, so that's why I went looking for an Introduction and I decided on this one - Philosophy of the Arts - An Introduction to Aesthetics @ Amazon. I feel much better prepared now to wade into this arena, and what I'm finding there so far is about what I would expect - a lot of stuff I don't really care much about, with occasionally a standout idea that lights up my brain like a Christmas tree. It can be really dry academic stuff for long stretches, but when it gets good it gets really really good. Developing new thought structures about art allows you to think about things you weren't able to before, or to bring new perspectives to things you thought you knew thoroughly already.

Here are a couple of online articles that got me started:
Kant, Immanuel: Aesthetics - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Hegel's Aesthetics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

I find Hegel much more readable than Kant.

But the Romanticism is more fun and more accessible than the aesthetics. It's not an art movement or period, but rather a way of approaching art that cuts through several different periods and movements and spans many countries. Very hard to really define, but essentially it's about the artist bringing his own personal character and emotion to bear on his subject rather than providing a clear objective viewpoint on something. Passion and personality are more important than accuracy.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance by Walter Pater is one of the best books I've read about it. Another is Romanticism by Hugh Honour, which puts it into perspective beautifully. And just for fun I also got Selected Writings by John Ruskin - who stood in opposition to Romanticism for its hippy-dippy subjectivism. One of the best books of the bunch.

Imagination is one of the qualities most prized by the Romantics. They want art to show imaginativeness, not just dull photorealistic accuracy. Hence they were/are strongly opposed to movements like Neoclassicism, Realism and the newer Photorealism. And you know what - this speaks to me - I've been getting pretty tired of doing nothing but studies aimed at accuracy and precision. Of course those are necessary for learning the craft of art, every artist worth their salt needs to go through their academic training period. But I definitely prefer when I can cut loose and do something with some imaginative freedom!

It's very stimulating to encounter this deep level of discussion about art and aesthetics, so rare today in any venue outside of Conceptart and the Illustration Art blog. Of course that could be because I haven't ventured into the deep water anywhere else, but it's not for lack of desire. It's more that I was unaware of this level of dialectic concerning art.Generally what you encounter is advice on how to draw and paint - very utilitarian stuff - or very shallow discussion about what kind of art people like or who their favorite artists are. One thing to note about most of the books I listed above - they were all written long ago. Most in or before the 19th century - in other words before the age of Modernism that started with the dawning of the 20th century. Close on the heels of Modernism came its evil shadow Postmodernism  which has declared the end of figurative painting, the end of beauty, of content and meaning - the end of pretty much everything that art used to be about. There was a steep decline though even before Postmodernism reared its ugly head - Modernism itself began as something amazing and beautiful - Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Expressionism, up until Abstract Expressionism. At that point everything changed and quality ceased to be a goal. Or rather nobody could tell what quality was anymore because - as the saying goes - my 4 year old could paint that!

A big part of the change was the fact that the early modernists had the benefit of a rigorous classical training, not only in art, but in the humanities across the board.They were avidly reading the books and papers and attending lectures by these writers I've listed as well as many others, and spent a lot of time discussing the topics and thinking about them. Their letters to each other were filled with this kind of discourse. But no longer. Postmodernism has ended it all, except for those who can find a way around over or through its massive edifice to discover the now largely lost knowledge, which is never discussed in most so-called art schools except in terms of derision and contempt. I feel at this point like some of the early Renaissance artists must have felt when the discoveries of ancient Rome and Greece started becoming known and provided a massive jump start to the Age of Enlightenment.

DECISIVE

I'm becoming aware that at least part of the reason for all my indecisive linework in these quicksketches is because I have too many ideas of what I'm trying to do and I don't choose one. What I mean is - I've delved a little ways into various approaches to gesture drawing (Proko, Vilppu, Huston, Stanchfield etc) and now I'm getting interested in contour, continuous line and rhythm drawing techniques. And when I sit down to do some figure sketches all these approaches are drifting through my head, and as I draw I seem to shift from one to another. Or worse, since I haven't developed complete proficiency in any of them yet, I'm shifting from half-formed notions of one to something consisting of bits and pieces of others. It's like if you step into the dojo knowing a little about karate, judo, jiu jitsu, and aikido, and have your head full of old movies with guys fighting, and no clear idea of what approach you're going to use. You'd be a mess!! You'd just hurt yourself.

I'm still thinking about what Sycra said (2 posts back) about drilling until you get the form down perfectly. It requires commitment to one discipline and a clear head. Focus.

Note - there's nothing wrong with restated lines - they can be a beautiful part of a drawing. It's the indecisive or hairy lines that have to go.

And of course part of the problem is that I'm still developing my ideas about the figure.

I think there's another reason as well - I'm searching for a very intuitive and fluid way to draw the figure, and trying to learn more about it as I go forward. I suspect those people who have a very specific way of doing gestures (for instance) and never vary from it don't learn anything from it, except how to make nice smooth lines.

There seems to be a certain way that a lot of today's digital artists conceive of the figure that's very materialistic, as if they see the body as a machine made of definite and unchanging parts hinged together. I think this comes from video games and CGI mostly. Maybe action figures too. Personally my influences come from drawing and painting of the past - key among them of course the heroic fantasy artists of the 60's/70's and lots of illustrators. The ones I'm drawn to, at least the ones I'm thinking of now, tended to draw in a loose intuitive way, and I'm sure they trained with a lot of contour and rhythm drawing exercises, including blind contour. A strong emphasis on intuition and fluidity. The really good artists (my opinion) blend materialism and intuition.

But see - I'm whaffling (being indecisive) - I have all these different ideas about why I make hairy sloppy drawings, and when I set out to think about it I come up with more ideas and end up writing an essay rather than focus on the actual problem and a clear solution. It's good to think about these things - hell it's necessary. Leonardo said something about an artist who doesn't theorize being like a sailor setting off on a journey without compass or charts. But I need to end it with a clear concise solution to the stated problem.

So here it is - designate an amount of time to doing one type of exercise. Be clear which it is. Look at tutorials or books about it, get an idea of how to practice it, and then go. And always keep in mind to get rid of those hairy insecure lines.

How to learn

This is coming from Sycra's latest video, the 5th in his Pointy Chins series where he's detailing his growth over the last few years and how he's accomplished it:

He's been doing essentially the multiple reiterations method I did for designing swords, only he's been using it to find his own particular approach for figure drawing and shape language.  Basically whenever he realizes he's not very good at something in particular - like drawing the body from a certain angle or in a certain pose, he then launches into drawing it for a few days, over and over, making slight changes in his method until it starts to look good.

And I love the thing he said at one point - that when he feels defeated and just wants to throw up his arms and say "Oh crap - I can't do this!" he instead thinks "I'll bet Sinix can do this.. " and that spurs him to further effort and often breaks him right through the block. It's a sort of self-shaming through imaginary competition, so he doesn't actually compare notes with the other person, but he imagines the humiliation of it and also the triumph he would feel in being able to surpass him, or at least how good it would feel to NOT suffer that humiliation. This is what I call competition/camaraderie - it can either be explicit, done by literally comparing notes with somebody, or implicit, by using an imagined version of them, which seems to be just as effective (maybe more so because the real person doesn't always react the way you imagine he would, and you might not be able to get in contact with him when you want to).

He mentioned a book called The Art of Learning that I considered getting, but according to the Amazon reviews it's more of a biography about how this one guy learns and doesn't really go into much detail about how you can do it except in the introduction. But the author is both a chess champion and martial arts black belt who says when he encounters a problem he doesn't see it as an obstacle but as a potential boost instead. It's good to learn where your weaknesses are so you can then work on them more. He also said when he is learning for instance a new punch he practices it until he's got it down perfectly before moving on, where-as the less proficient practitioners just get it good enough, and then the kicks good enough, and the blocks good enough, etc. Practice via repetition, but making sure you've got the correct form worked out rather than practicing bad form. Until you've got it perfect. Then move on to the next thing. And a few days  later, practice that former move again for a while, drill it to keep it from fading out of your memory. You have to keep doing that with each thing you learn until it's embedded firmly in your subconscious. And even then you can't let your skills go unused too long or they get rusty and you need to practice for a long time again to get them up to par.

How I plan to approach construction

After finally absorbing the entire Realism versus Construction thread and sleeping on it twice now, I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do - my own take on it all.

I'm going to proceed along the lines basically laid out by Vilppu (and this agrees with some of what people were saying on the thread too) -

'You don't measure - never measure, just draw the forms as accurately as you can and as you go forward you'll get better at it and proportions will fall into place.' (this is an approximation of what I've heard Glen say)

I don't intend to get into all the complex sub-construction, at least not now. Who knows later?  What I find works for me (for now) is a pretty simple construction, built from the gesture and done very gesturally - a curve to the arms and legs etc, draw them as modified cylinders, tapering where appropriate, but with boxy forms where appropriate too, like for the knees and wrists.

I do think I need to learn head construction, and will probably develop a technique for gestural torso construction to keep from screwing up the connection between ribcage and pelvis. This all essentially means I'm going to continue exactly as I was already planning to - doing head construction studies and a lot of gestural figure drawings, both with and without reference, without any measuring.

I really like the idea that the old masters didn't do construction, though they doubtless did learn to draw the geometric solids from any angle in any light and were trained to think in those terms, to at least visualize simple construction. But I'm not averse to doing construction if I'm having trouble figuring out some parts.

I do know that in the 80's, before I knew much about anatomy or figure drawing, but I was well versed in perspective and the basic tubes and cubes construction, I was able to draw pretty decent (anatomically wrong) figures with little to no construction. Usually all I needed was a shoulder-to-shoulder line to start off, and in fact that was generally the first line I would make, it gave direction to everything else and set the scale. I was able to visualize how the figure would fit (close anyway) and draw the body parts basically without construction. But now, knowing what I've learned since then, I'll probably start with gesture lines.

Of course this is only a working proposition, subject to change at any time, and whatever emerges from actual practice takes precedence over preliminary plans, which are often so far off the mark..

Huston lecture 6 notes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lWtavYrQrs&index=8&list=PLC64188974DFF3A52

When I first decided to search for any Steve Huston videos and found these excellent lectures, my intention was to see if I like his teaching to decide whether I should sign up for New Masters Academy or not. I do. But now, after looking at a bunch of previews of what's on offer in there, I've decided between these lectures, the free gesture tutorials on NMA, and all the Vilppu videos I've seen, there's really ho need for NMA. Honestly it doesn't look like either of them is teaching significantly different stuff there than what I've already seen from them. The only reason would be for more repetition and better video/sound quality really. Though I must say repetition is actually a damn good reason in itself - it's how we learn after all.

Anyway, on to the notes. First 40 minutes -

Gesture/Structure

getting the whole - everything being part of a greater picture.

the parts are like notes, the gesture and composition are like melody, more important. The journey rather than the individual steps.

Stretch is the gesture (most instructors say gesture s stretch pinch and twist). Pinch is the form - if you draw the stretch to get gesture and then define the forms the pinch takes care of itself.

Each stretch leads to a pinch, then another stretch, Though sometimes several forms or parts can be included in a single stretch or pinch.

But the figure is a dynamically balanced set of stretches and opposed pinches.

Basic art history tour through from Egyptian front/side views through Kritios boy standing stiff to be seen frontally only, to classical Greek sculpture defined by Controppasto.

But then he takes it farther, and I wasn't aware of this part --

Michelangelo created modern dynamism in art

Michelangelo went beyond controppasto by bending the figure forward at the waist and exaggerating the twist through it. Classical contrapposto is a relaxed standing pose with opposed tilts of the big forms against each other and a subtle twist through it as well - the well-known 'line of the gesture', which is important in classical Ballet. But Michelangelo also bent the waist forward to bring in another dimension to the action - rather than ranged along essentially an upward line (though twisting and bending a bit), the line itself now bends toward the viewer or away from the viewer. Huston called this 'thinking like a painter rather than a sculptor', because it would be difficult or impossible in heavy brittle stone. This idea enables more complex and active painting like Tiepolo and Frazetta, with all their extreme dynamism.

Composition

3 levels to composition--

Tonal

• Values

Color

• Key

Drawn

• Gesture
• Structure
• Armature

Art is about integrating everything into a cohesive whole. This is true for each of these categories of composition. We usually integrate by reducing choices - limited colors, limited values etc - group complex muscles into groups by function.

The drawn composition (armature I suppose?) is basically a way of taking the individual figures and other elements and applying the ideas of gesture to them to unify the entire image through one idea.

Composition is design + a concept

Many schools teach that composition is only design, but that's just a modern idea and too simplistic. It's really all the elements of design brought together to create a single idea that unifies the image - a narrative.

Composition (drawn) is made of shapes in alignment. The shapes are flat versions of forms, and are analogous to the forms making up figures, and alignment is gesture.

Shapes and colors and numbers can have symbolic meaning. Used not as design but to help tell the story.

Really good stories have a theme that runs even underneath the story. The theme is the concept.

The theme/concept guides selection of symbolic shapes, colors, numbers and how they're arranged.

CREATIVITY

Still from the same uber-thread. Interesting, how this is the first thread since the Talent thread to awaken my interest to this level, and it also deals with talent (the talk turned to talent and this post was a response to that - the person said he doesn't believe in talent he believes in creativity). Of course it wasn't the discussion about talent itself that brought me so much benefit in that thread either, but about composition. 

A man who is after money and power and prestige is a beggar, because he continuously begs. He has nothing to give to the world. Be a giver. Share whatsoever you can!

CREATIVITY has nothing to do with any activity in particular -- with painting, poetry, dancing, singing. It has nothing to do with anything in particular.
Anything can be creative -- you bring that quality to the activity. Activity itself is neither creative nor uncreative. You can paint in an uncreative way. You can sing in an uncreative way. You can clean the floor in a creative way. You can cook in a creative way.

Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach -- how you look at things.
So the first thing to be remembered: don't confine creativity to anything in particular. A man is creative -- and if he is creative, whatsoever he does, even if he walks, you can see in his walking there is creativity.
Even if he sits silently and does nothing, even non-doing will be a creative act.
Once you understand it -- that it is you, the person, who is creative or uncreative -- then this problem disappears.
Not everybody can be a painter -- and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live. And not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative.
Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing it is not purely economical, then it is creative. If you have something growing out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine.
You become more divine as you become more creative. all the religions of the world have said: God is the Creator. I don't know whether He is the Creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So He must be the Creator because people who have been creative have been closest to Him.
Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it -- whatsoever it is! irrelevant of the fact of what it is.
Have you seen Paras cleaning this floor of Chuang Tzu auditorium? Then you will know: cleaning can become creative. With what love! Almost singing and dancing inside. If you clean the floor with such love, you have done an invisible painting. You lived that moment in such delight that it has given you some inner growth. You cannot be the same after a creative act.
Creativity means loving whatsoever you do -- enjoying, celebrating it, as a gift of God! Maybe nobody comes to know about it. Who is going to praise Paras for cleaning this floor? History will not take any account of it; newspapers will not publish her name and pictures -- but that is irrelevant. She enjoyed it. The value is intrinsic.
So if you are looking for fame and then you think you are creative -- if you become famous like Picasso, then you are creative -- then you will miss. Then you are, in fact, not creative at all: you are a politician, ambitious. If fame happens, good. If it doesn't happen, good. It should not be the consideration. The consideration should be that you are enjoying whatsoever you are doing. It is your love-affair.
If your act is your love-affair, then it becomes creative. Small things become great by the touch of love and delight.

The questioner asks: "I believed I was uncreative." If you believe in that way, you will become uncreative -- because belief is not just belief. It opens doors; it closes doors. If you have a wrong belief, then that will hang around you as a closed door. If you believe that you are uncreative, you will become uncreative -- because that belief will obstruct, continuously negate, all possibilities of flowing. It will not
allow your energy to flow because you will continuously say: "I am uncreative."
This has been taught to everybody. Very few people are accepted as creative: A few painters, a few poets -- one in a million. This is foolish! Every human being is a born creator. Watch children and you will see: all children are creative. By and by, we destroy their creativity. By and by, we force wrong beliefs on them. By and by, we distract them. By and by, we make them more and more economical and political and
ambitious.
When ambition enters, creativity disappears -- because an ambitious man cannot be creative, because an ambitious man cannot love any activity for its own sake. While he is painting he is looking ahead; he is thinking, 'When am I going to get a Nobel Prize?' When he is writing a novel, he is looking ahead. He is always in the future -- and a creative person is always in the present.
We destroy creativity. Nobody is born uncreative, but we make ninety-nine percent of people uncreative.
But just throwing the responsibility on the society is not going to help -- you have to take your life in your own hands. You have to drop wrong conditionings. You have to drop wrong, hypnotic auto-suggestions that have been given to you in your childhood. Drop them! Purify yourself of all conditionings... and suddenly you will see you are creative.
To be and to be creative are synonymous. It is impossible to be and not to be creative. But that impossible thing has happened, that ugly phenomenon has happened, because all your creative sources have been plugged, blocked, destroyed, and your whole energy has been forced into some activity that the society thinks is going to pay.
Our whole attitude about life is money-oriented. And money is one of the most uncreative things one can become interested in. Our whole approach is power-oriented and power is destructive, not creative. A man who is after money will become destructive, because money has to be robbed, exploited; it has to be
taken away from many people, only then can you have it. Power simply means you have to make many people impotent, you have to destroy them -- only then will you be powerful, can you be powerful.
Remember: these are destructive acts. A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world -- a song here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, meditate better. When he leaves this world, he leaves a better world behind him. Nobody may know him; somebody may know him -- that is not the point. But he leaves the world a better world, tremendously fulfilled because his life has been of some intrinsic value.
Money, power, prestige, are uncreative; not only uncreative, but destructive activities. Beware of them!
And if you beware of them you can become creative very easily. I am not saying that your creativity is going to give you power, prestige, money. No, I cannot promise you any rose-gardens. It may give you trouble. It may force you to live a poor man's life. All that I can promise you is that deep inside you will be the richest man possible; deep inside you will be fulfilled; deep inside you will be full of joy and celebration. You will be continuously receiving more and more blessings from God. Your life will be a life of benediction.

Killer Instinct

The undying Talent thread meanders on - mostly uninterestingly aside from a few good statements now and then. The latest involves the killer instinct - something required in competitive sports to reach the highest level of performance. This is in fact a component of performance, not so much an aspect of artistic talent, but still vitally important in the mix. 

It’s about attitude and confidence, that intense desire to knock it right out of the park, to show ‘em what you can REALLY do. I refer to it as ‘Showoff Mode’, and it’s also a component in what I call ‘competition/cameraderie’, sort of the buddy system applied to learning art. Think Frazetta. Or Kent Williams. You know these guys want to dazzle everybody with what they can do - they want to test their own limits and see what they’re capable of. 

I suppose it’s pretty necessary for doing heroic fantasy art - it’s the spirit of rugged individualism, the drive and ambition of masculinity. I think you need to feel it to create characters that stand proud and defy all opposition with a smirk and a swagger. 

Heroic Fantasy - Humanism, dynamism and stasis

In the 60's and 70's humanism was front and center, in the movies and popular music as well as the heroic fantasy painting movement. It was larger-than-life personalities in conflict - represented visually by powerful bodies, bright colors and straining poses. Clothes, weapons and etc were sublimated, minimized and simplified to serve as accessories and not detract from the main drama of the human conflict.

But thanks to the specific influences that began in the late 70's and are still intensifying today - video games, spectacular special effects in movies, CGI and extreme stunt work  - the emphasis seems to have moved to a point where the human element is often obscured. In many of today's digital fantasy illustrations the human body is stiff and lifeless like a mannikin, no real gesture or flow to it, and detailed as a form rather than a living thing. And the emphasis is often on elaborate armor or realistically depicted clothing that's painstakingly researched or developed with an eye toward realism rather than dynamism or simplification, or that’s stylized to the point that it overwhelms the human element completely. The weapons are often also extremely elaborate and sometimes ridiculously big - which comes from the huge influence of Anime and Manga. Much of fantasy painting seems to have taken the same road since the 70’s as rock music - away from humanism and into extremism (Various metal subgenres). 

EDIT:
After posting this I realized it isn't that fantasy art has changed with the times - it's that the heroic fantasy movement was huge then and has subsided largely in favor of what would more properly just be called Fantasy art. Even though it often still involves weapons and fighting - so technically heroism - it often fails to be humanist in nature. Even then the other strain existed - there were artists doing elaborate clothing fantasies that happened to be set in medieval times or some other romantic setting so it crosses partially over the line into heroic fantasy. And I use the term to refer specifically to the movement led by Frazetta, a broader definition of it certainly can be used. My goal isn't to define terms but to explore ideas, and I'm using convenient terms that are familiar to me to do so. As soon as you start getting into definitions and splitting hairs you're thinking analytically and no longer synthetically - dissecting rather than exploring. Dissection kills what it seeks to examine.

I've also noticed a strong divide between what I call dynamic and static figurative art. It's pretty self explanatory - the dynamic strain is about power and grace and movement and vivid color, while the static strain is more about realism and likeness and stillness. There are different ways to get something across dynamically - a certain visual vocabulary - an emphasis on gesture and rhythm and movement throughout the image. Static artists tend to focus more on surface and capturing effects of shadow and light and detail. Their images often resemble photorealistic renderings, or sometimes life drawings  which involve people holding a pose that can be comfortably maintained for a long time - often resulting in realistic renderings of bored people holding very still. Dynamic artists tend to learn to work more from imagination or to modify reference by drawing gesturally rather than rendering surface details. Also, however dynamically an image may start out, overworking tends to drain it and replace it with stasis. It's important if you want that dynamism, to learn to work rapidly and keep as much as possible of the initial energy from your sketches. I think this is why Frazetta worked alla prima rather than doing glazes and layers. It's also why he usually just did a couple of really rough thumbs and an equally rough watercolor comp before launching to work, rather than working everything out analytically. Most of my favorite artists seem to favor the dynamic approach with minimal planning. They seem to like the spontaneity of letting it partially develop right on the canvas. It's the element of chance - it's adventurous (with all the concomitant risks) rather than safe. When it works it's exhilarating - but the risk is that it won't always work.

Notes from 2nd half of 1st Huston lecture

Study notes to help me remember.

Important elements to use in beginning a picture --

Shape - Value - Silhouette

Different value = different plane

Same value = same plane

This applies to the planes of foreground, mid, and background as well as planes facing at different angles to the light source.

Values create structure - flattening values flattens structure.

Structure creates attention. More structure (more value changes) creates more attention - less structure (less value changes) creates less attention.

A figure can use a whole value system that's different from the whole value system of the background - can be a full value range figure against limited value bg, a high-keyed figure on a low-key bg, etc. 

Different value ranges can overlap a bit.

Organize or Order the picture with value plans.

3 levels of ordering through value - 

• Flat value plan
• Form
• Space

The first step is the flat value plan, just creating clarity through silhouette. Graphic Design.

Form means use value to depict lighting and give shape to forms, while space refers to layering foreground, midground and background by value changes.

As you begin to render it changes to Different value RANGE = different plane. Same value range = same plane.

After these stages use gradations and edges to refine before any rendering. Gradations give far more latitude than just different value range = different plane - same idea but with more subtlety. And then edges extend the same idea even farther. He talks about 7 different edges - hard, soft and lost with variations in between. He also includes various types of mark making as being similar to edges - a rough sloppy scribbly edge where you scrub strokes of background value right over the edge f the figure for instance creates a certain type of edge with a certain energy. Layering it semi-transparently over part of it creates a different energy and a different sense of edge. Etc etc. 

Steve Huston lectures - figure drawing is like composition is like story structure

Huston is an instructor for the New Masters Academy, alongside Glen Vilppu. I was considering signing up at least for a month to see if it's worth getting a full year - did a quick google and found a channel with a bunch of his lectures from 2000. So far I've seen about a half hour of the first one - some excellent stuff I haven't really heard before, much of it anyway.

One thing that really impressed me - he says when drawing the figure, even for a quicksketch, it's vitally important to get each part down accurately in terms of placement and shape and direction before moving on, or you have only a vague blob to attach the next form to, which tends to result in a bad connection. In fact many people start out by drawing a mass of vague incorrect forms with the intention of coming back and tightening them up afterwards, but when you do that it's too hard to fix all the bad connections and other errors - you really want to get each part right the first time before moving on, then it gives you something proper to work from when drawing the next form. The overall result will be a much more accurate and well-connected drawing.

Well this sounds really familiar to me - in fact I've been reading the same words in the Ian Roberts book Mastering Composition, only he's talking about an entire composition, not just a figure. So this is a universal principle then. Interesting.

This somehow led me to the idea also that composition (of entire image or of figure, or anything else really) is similar to story structure - literally an invisible scaffolding that everything hangs on, that connects the pieces and gives them context and meaning. Bam!! There we go - all that time spent studying story structure pays off!

Get ye in the box

At the end I'll link to an article by Dave Palumbo on the Muddy Colors blog about working inside the box - it parallels what I'm about to say in certain ways, though I have a somewhat different slant on it. Here's a quote from it that helps:

“That’s just an acting challenge and that’s difficult, but that kind of - being put in a box we call that. Like, ‘put me in a box and I’ll make it work.’ you give me - you make it really difficult for me and I’ll make it work. Because that’s where you have to be really creative.”

-Bill Murray on filming Groundhog Day

The box I'm talking about doesn't make things more difficult though, it makes them easier in a way. The box I'm talking about is genre, or even subgenre. Until now I've been sort of casting about lost because I didn't have a subgenre in mind - though it's true, as I've been saying since the beginning of this blog my guiding lights have been Frazetta, Jeff Jones and Kent Williams, I refused to try to literally paint like them, partly because 2 of them are decades out of date and that kind of work wouldn't go over well in today's fantasy painting market. Also because I didn't want to limit myself to copying anybody with a really strong style.

I've seen people on ConceptArt move past me and I think it's because they have a very clear idea of exactly what they want to paint and how, where-as I've been rudderless, wanting my skills to be based on the heroic fantasy painting genre of the 60's and 70's (and Kent Williams) but not wanting to imitate them, and so it's been like trying to reinvent the wheel. While people who have a group of modern fantasy painters they're willing to imitate or emulate can easily climb up on their shoulders by imitating the kind of effects and techniques they use, and benefit from it rapidly.

I find for instance that when I watch a Glen Vilppu video and then allow myself to draw like him my work is a lot stronger than if I wasn't trying to draw like anybody. The same applied when I was trying to draw basically like Mike Mattesi or George Bridgman. It's the way you learn, unless you're a masochist and want to spend 20 years trying to get anywhere. Most of the great artists we know of did the same - started off imitating a hero of theirs, or several, and then when they got their chops down joined the movement - Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Expressionists, what have you. It's about limiting your choices severely. If you know what kind of color palette you want to use and how you want to approach painting people or landscapes or whatever, that's so much easier than trying to do it without the limitations in place. As someone said in the comments under the article - a river has limits and it flows rapidly, but a swamp has no limits so it stagnates.

I needed to find some artists who are completely viable in the contemporary scene but whose art looks more like traditional painting - chunky and powerful. I found them in Camilla Vielmond and Dave Seguin, as well as a few others (but those 2 stand out for me in particular). Recently I discovered a site called DrawCrowd and ran across both of them (I had already seen Camilla's work on CA.O, but it didn't really gel until I saw them both on the same site). And I had been thinking for a while about moving toward something more like contemporary fantasy painting anyway - I knew I needed a genre or even a subgenre to limit myself to in order to really start moving ahead rapidly. Sort of the way an explosion can just dissipate its energy in every direction until you set one off inside a tube, and then you've got a rocket.

Ok, here's that Dave Palumbo article (he used to be one of the pros on ConceptArt back when I first started hanging around there): Put me in a box

How much does neatness count?

I tend to be a pretty sloppy artist - well ok, it's not just art. In looking at a lot of work by contemporary fantasy painters it seems they tend to be just the opposite, so I've been thinking about the importance of neatness in drawing/painting. Random thoughts follow.

To be too preoccupied with neatness is extremely limiting. I think it makes a person tend toward very conservative safe choices in what they do, and to put extra effort in at every stage to clean things up. I thin this tends to force you to slow down and not keep up with the racing creative mind. When the ideas are coming in fast and furious I feel the need to mark them down as quickly as possible, so I can keep up and try to get the most out of them.

But the downside of that is I end up with sloppy images and then need to do a lot of cleanup - basically repaint them - in order to end up with something resembling pro quality. And the repainting kills any vestige of spontaneity.

I think there's a tightrope to walk - this is much like my recent post about intuitive versus intellectual thinking - it's a yin/yang thing and you need to be always feeling for the dynamic balance between the two, not automatically tending toward one or the other too much. As in all things, it's not just moderation, but a sensitivity and continually adjusting response between the extremes, not letting yourself go too far in either direction but responding to changing conditions extemporaneously.

In fact, I'm thinking it might be best to have areas of neatness probably corresponding to focal areas, interspersed with areas of controlled chaos. Needs further thought, and mostly needs to be tested in practice.

EDIT:
Further thoughts - the stuff I said about keeping up with the racing creative mind - of course that would be in the thumbnail stage - which is basically what I've bene doing lately, all quicksketch. But on the latest painting - I was having creative thoughts about compositional choices and racing to paint them in fast enough. So yeah, I guess it does apply even in the later stages of painting.

I also think as I get more used to my new approaches to drawing and painting Ill be better able to develop neater work habits without sacrificing the speed and spontaneity. I think it's mostly a matter of knowing your tools and techniques well from a lot of experience, and just knowing when and where to put in a little extra effort to clean things up as you go, so you don't have to repaint.

I ALSO think it's a matter of flipping a switch in your mind, from allowing yourself to be all crazy messy to disciplining yourself to think before you draw. I've flipped that switch before - it doesn't remain permanently, I let it slip after a while. But when I'm familiar enough with the new tools and techniques and ideas I can flip it again.

Random thoughts on the so-called logic/ intuition divide

I jotted down these rough notes some time ago, I think it was when I was really wiped out by the sinus infection. I intended to work it up and polish it before posting, but I like the directness and punchiness of it, so I'll just throw it down as is:



Gestural/expressive is accessed through the other ‘side’ of the mind from logical/rational/structural.

It falls along the same divide as what is commonly referred to as left and right hemispheres and what seems to largely correspond with conscious and unconscious thought.

Hard if not impossible to access both simultaneously, must switch gears. Materialism, reasoning, science/ religion, spirituality, emotion.

These two sides are often seen as opposites as if you must choose one over the other and remain that way always - which is an impossibility. Even Spock was half human, and Kirk used logic and reason at times - and the best moments were always because Spock revealed his emotions or intuition. It’s not as simple and divisive as that. Embrace both, try to find ways to help them merge and work together or cooperatively rather than artificially separating them and seeing them as opposites.

I think the way to get them closest is to absorb the conscious part through repetition until it sinks into the unconscious. That can be done - I don’t think it works the other way. So all the structural stuff - the measuring and guidelines, the tubes and cubes etc - practice it until it becomes intuitive. Then you can stop drawing all the guidelines and rely on intuition, though I assume you’ll still need to pay attention as you go to make sure you’re not losing sight of proportions and structure. But you shouldn’t need to draw out the guidelines anymore, at least most of the time, though I’m sure it will be necessary for some difficult situations.

Structural drawing, perspective, calculating values and colors, measuring proportions and charting anatomy. All very logical left-brain stuff. Can be taught and learned and practiced and memorized. Unlike the intuitive stuff - the stuff some people like to remind us over and over that ‘can’t be taught’. I guess these teachable, memorizable skills are what we know as the fundamentals. In our student years we need to work on them as much as possible, getting fully acquainted with each of them and impressing them into muscle memory and into the unconscious awareness where they can filter into right brain intuitive awareness. After drawing enough bodies in terms of tubes and cubes, you understand the structure well enough that you don’t need to draw it out anymore, and you can start to work more gesturally while still incorporating at least somewhat decent proportions and structure.

Composition and abstration

It's a fox and hedgehog thing: The fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. The understanding that you seek is the moment you become both the hedgehog and the fox.
However.
Here is where to start. And this is very, very, very important.
All good pictures (as opposed to listless, bad pictures) are written in sentences of shapes. These shapes can be as sharp and clear as a bell or implied, evoked and elided like smoke. Or they can be a combination of both. Lines are just long thin shapes related to the big shapes either side of them (which they both describe and are given context by).
The moment you stop writing your picture in this way, the moment you just make unrelated marks, the thing gets dirty and confused, and the eye snags and drags over the image, becoming bored and 'losing the thread'.
Go and look at a picture you really like. See how your eye can glide around in a continuous melody of shapes each related to the others, 'hooked' to each other, mashing, kissing, pushing, stroking, locking, knocking, shoving, pinching, caressing each other. This is as true for Rembrandt or Velasquez, Waterhouse or Sargent as it is for John Jude Palencar or Picasso, Monet or Modrian or Morandi or Muncha. Even the orange picture with the severed head advertising the 'Portfolio' on this page or the strap-line image at the top are expressive because they are written with this understanding firmly inside the artists who made them.
It is the difference between artists who write expressive, fascinating work and those who write dead statements about what we already know.

Read more: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/294954-Abstract-approach-to-painting#ixzz3LInxDiGp



Recommended book from that thread: A Proven Strategy for Creating Great Art by Dan McCaw

From top Amazon review:

Design is fundamental to a good painting. Design is largely created by the values and shapes chosen. If you try out a series of thumbnail sketches you are more likely to come up with an interesting design. Doing a value study is going to help you focus on the values that will make the painting work. If you are going to paint in color you need to know how light and color work on the variety of light and shadow planes. Contrasting warm and cool colors is usually helpful. Paying attention to edges - when to accentuate, soften or lose them. The importance of using accents. Avoiding too much color mixing on the palette or mixing with the brush on the painting in order to create clear and interestingly textured brushwork.

The book is ridiculously expensive - but it seems to be just a review of compositional ideas you can find in many other books. I just wanted to add it to this post to yet again reinforce those ideas through repetition. Apparently, according to another review, the book is similar to The Yin and Yang of Painting (which I already have). That one is much less expensive, but my initial opinion was that it focuses only on a very limited area of composition and approached it a rather limited way as well. Might need to take another look. In fact I think it's time to do a post on all my composition books. 

Movement: Elements of Composition

Excerpted from Painting: About.com - Elements of Composition: Movement

Movement is the creation of a sense of an ebb and flow through a painting which turns it from passive wallpaper to a dynamic extension of the viewer’s psyche, the creation of a inter-reaction that takes the viewer on a path of discovery.

When creating movement in a painting, think about the choreography of the process, what you are revealing to the audience, what is being left to the imagination. A painting should be a question, not an answer. Calling to the audience's imagination allows different viewers to interact in different ways, which is why it’s recommended you always leave something unsaid in a painting, to give the audience the chance of a unique interaction.

The painting should reveal itself slowly to the audience, it should offer nooks and crannies that lead off the main path. In other words, the painting should be a journey not the destination. A painting which offers only a static viewpoint is no better than a holiday snap (it would provide the photographer with a key to their memories, but merely be an arbitrary image to anyone not emotionally involved). The artist should encourage the viewer to interact with the subject, to learn and grow. The painting can be a simple anecdote, or an heroic tale, but it should speak to the viewer with the joy of a story being unraveled.

The artist is a conductor, bringing the viewer’s eye through the painting using a myriad of techniques which give the painting a feel of motion, either through space, or time, or even emotion. Movement can be given in a painting through a strong fundamental image, say the flowing of a river; by the light of a gentle evening sun, which implies the passing of a day; or through the emotion of a portrait embellished by surrounding iconic symbolism, that shows how the figure arrived at that feeling. Movement can also be achieved through the effect of growth or decay. A vibrancy that infuses the subject, and says to the viewer, this is life, this is motion.

{Paragraph deleted because I don't buy into the idea that we 'read' pictures from left to right and top to bottom. I've never parsed a picture that way - I can instantly tell the difference between an image and text, and I assume everyone else can too. I also don't buy that people's eyes enter at the bottom, unless the image is life sized and positioned to create the illusion of being a real space. My eye is drawn immediately to areas of greatest contrast, to faces, or to other striking parts of the image.}

Movement can be indicated by the flow of objects in the painting, their arrangement and pattern; through the use of perspective. Movement can be implied by the direction that figures face -- a passive painting would have a synergistic grouped direction, whereas randomness in the direction of figures will give a wildness, and energetic vitality to a painting.

Next the artist can consider the use of color (including such optical effects as blue moving away from the eye, and red approaching it); brush stroke (mark making can add to the flow of the painting through their direction, as well as giving a velocity to the movement through variation in the size of brush stroke); the pattern of light and shade; and tone (which is important to peripheral vision, and therefore can draw the eye away from a central subject). Consider reinforcing the main directions of movement by echoing (for example, making the clouds in the sky flow in the same way as the waves on the sea) and cycling (bringing the eye back to the starting point, so the journey can begin anew).

Learning to see - recent science relating to drawing

Excerpted from an article @ Livescience:

People who can't draw well aren't seeing the world as it really is. When we look at an object, our visual systems automatically misjudge such attributes as size, shape and color; research over the past three years shows at least some of these misperceptions translate into drawing errors. Paradoxically, in other circumstances the misperceptions help us make sense of the world. For example, objects appear larger when they are closer than when they are far away. Even so, the visual system practices "size constancy" by perceiving the object as being approximately one size no matter how far away it is. The visual system, "knowing" a distant object is really bigger than it appears, sends false information to the brain about what the eyeball is seeing.

Those who draw well are better able to override these visual misperceptions and perceive what their own eyeballs are really seeing.

Rebecca Chamberlain, a psychologist at University College London... and her colleagues recently conducted experiments investigating the role of visual memory in the drawing process. They believe that drawing skill results in part from an ability to remember simple relationships in an object such as an angle between two lines from the moment the angle is perceived to the moment it is drawn. Additionally, "drawing seems to involve focusing on both holistic proportional relationships as well as focus on detail isolated from the whole. Perhaps it is the ability to switch between these two modes of seeing that underpins successful drawing," Chamberlain told Life's Little Mysteries.

Based on their research, the psychologists recommended the following techniques for getting better at drawing: Focus on scaling a drawing to fit the size of the paper; anchor an object in its surroundings by showing how it sits in space; focus on the distance between elements of the object and on their relative sizes; and focus on the size and shape of "negative space," or the empty space between parts of the object. Lastly, they recommend thinking of "lines" as what they really are — boundaries between light and dark areas.

As Chris McManus, a member of the research team, noted, "There are few human skills which don't improve with practice."

EDIT

After sleeping on this, it seems a lot less momentous to me. The findings are nothing new - in fact they're mostly incorporated into any decent drawing course. There's a huge emphasis in figure drawing from the model or reference on comparing things to imaginary horizontals and verticals and on accurately measuring angles, normally by holding your pencil against the model (visually.. ) and moving it to the drawing without changing the angle. The first part is interesting though, about the ways the brain interprets visual imagery and filters out 'distortions' like size difference. It does the same when your head is tilted or upside-down, which is why those POV shots in movies always feel so weird. We tend to feel that we're seeing things right side up no matter the orientation of the head. And the techniques listed in the 3rd paragraph are also well-known to any art student. 

What is interesting to me about it is the idea of visual memory and the ability to train it, as well as the concept of switching between holistic and detail modes of seeing.