Two Fine Points of Drawing

This post is a reminder of a couple of sometimes overlooked niceties of drawing.  One is indicating, here and there, the thickness of something thin.  For illustration I chose a lower eyelid, the wire frame of a pair of glasses and a shirt collar.

 

 

Another is the follow-through/wrap-around of a form which girds another form, such as a sleeve around an arm or a collar around a neck.

Such niceties may be ignored, but the artist should know what he is ignoring.



French Fries and Potato Chips

In learning to cook Asian style, one of the first steps is the proper cutting up of vegetables.  The belief is that more of the vegetables' energy is preserved if they are cut in the direction in which they grow rather than across their path, something like the cutting of french fries as opposed to the cutting of potato chips.

A parallel exists in shading drawings with linear hatching.  This detail of a sketch by Titian illustrates how the hatching describes the forms and at the same time suggests a flow of energy through them.

This is a more elaborate example of the same thing:

Next is a life drawing with the hatching cutting across the upright form of the torso, creating a relatively static impression.



This torso in another life drawing employs hatching which flows up and down the length of the figure.  The result is a felt current of energy along its axis.

No one conveyed more power and animation in his work than Michelangelo.

 

Passion in Portraits Part 3

This concludes the series.  I chose these sitters because there is evidence in each of their visages of the qualities I seek in a subject: ambition, drive, mastery, intensity of purpose, non-conformism, exceptional sensibilities, among others.

Included here besides men in business are a medical doctor, an actor-director, a musician, and a playwright/combat veteran.

 

Passion in Portraits Part 2

During my forties I was supported by selling multiples - limited edition serigraphs and offset reproductions of my artwork.  That freed me to make portraits of sitters of my own choosing.

The pictures presented here are part of a uniform series limited to men, all drawn with a no.2 office pencil on white paper.

In this group, there is an attorney, a stock analyst, a rock star, a college professor and men in various businesses.

What they have in common is fire.