Kathe Kollwitz

An appreciation the German artist, Kathe Kollwitz, 1867-1945, at Scriptophobia:

Exhibition Opportunity for Students

7th Annual

RITES OF PASSAGE

JUNIORS, SENIORS, and

GRADUATES ONE-YEAR OUT

$300 BEST OF SHOW AWARD

Postmark Deadline for Entry: April 13, 2011

From Manifest Gallery's website:
Every year Manifest seeks to energize students and recent graduates of art and design programs towards higher goals, professionalism, and public-mindedness. Therefore, for a seventh year in a row, we offer this challenge to students and their professors in regional and national college programs to show us what you've got, bring it off campus, and share it with the everyday viewing public.

We believe there exists tremendous unexposed quality amongst people pursuing degrees in art and design. Revealing new artists is part of our mission!

NOW OPEN TO JUNIORS AND RECENT GRADUATES!

Manifest's is now seeking submissions for the Rites of Passage 2011 exhibit. All submissions must be postmarked or emailed no later than April 13, 2011.

One exhibit will feature the best work from artists about to receive or recently awarded an undergraduate degree from a regional, national, or international college art or design program. All entrants must have received or be scheduled to receive a college degree in 2010, 2011, or 2012, and provide an academic reference’s contact info.

For more details go to: Manifest Gallery

The Figure in Space

Relating The Figure to its Spatial Context

                        

                                                                        Sangram Majumdar

When we draw the figure it's obviously the human form that first captivates, then dominates our interest. In the presence of the naked body of the model, who is going to notice that her torso and head are framed by a distant door, or that an easel's vertical support is visible just behind her? Perhaps we feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the figure and think that our time is best spent working out that problem first before trying to add something as mundane as the chair upon which the model sits, or the background which, after all, is merely the background. Many beginning draughtsmen would gladly "outsource" the drawing of their backgrounds if that were possible.

In critiquing student drawings in progress I often note the absence of any attempt to address the contours or shapes that are formed by the supporting structures of chair, pillows, or background elements, all of which, in fact, supply wonderful negative shapes that actually assist the locating and proportioning of the figure. The reply I most often hear is, "I haven't gotten to that yet." By the end of the pose these issues often remain unvisited and unresolved, producing a type of drawing all too common in beginning drawing classes. The figure floats in a sea of white paper. Robbed of its spatial context and the cues to depth provided by the figure's overlapping of elements of the space, the drawing never achieves a convincing depth or volume, no matter how sensitively the contours and tonal modulations of the body are rendered.

The artists shown in the album below all place a value on dealing with the figure, not as symbol or sign, but as a form seen within a specific spatial context. From Leonardo's elaborate analytical perspective projections, to Vuillard's squiggling linear probes, to Giacometti's obsessive search for position, scale, and direction, all of these artists reveal an attempt to relate the figure to its space, to explore the phenomenon of corporeality, of "embodiment," and the mystery, if such a Romanticism may be excused, of "the spirit made flesh."

Drawings: The Figure in Space

Sketchbooks: Various Artists

"The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook." -Robert Henri

 

"I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen..."  -Frederick Franck

"It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character."  -Camille Pissarro

"Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds a great treasure."  -Michelangelo

 

The sketchbook is an important adjunct to drawing in the studio from the live model. Outside of the structured problems of a studio class, the informality and modest scale of the sketchbook allows you to follow your own fascinations in making images, to practice and absorb drawing concepts and techniques from class, and to redress any gaps that you perceive in your grasp of certain aspects of the figure. Are you missing something about the structure of the knee? You're in good company. Check out Van Gogh's studies of the knee in his sketchbook.

To attempt to draw living, moving figures from life is to enter a mindset that is all but lost in today's digitized visual culture, when most of us feel ourselves too pressed to take the time to do a drawing. To stop, and look, and draw, is the finest act of defiance!  A saying that has been attributed to everyone from Degas to Leonardo da Vinci states that an artist should be able to draw a man falling from a three story building before he hits the ground! Think of that the next time you feel seduced by the notion that living figures move too quickly to draw them effectively without the aid of a camera, or the long pose of  a model. Such is the basic nature of the sketch - an abbreviated moment, a modest little piece of life being lived, saved from oblivion by the motion of the pencil or the brush on paper. And the sketchbook is its repository.

Week 3: Brush & Ink Wash Drawings

Brush and ink wash drawings from Caravaggio in the 16th century, to David Park in the 20th.

Caravaggio

Cambiaso

Van Dyck

Rembrandt

Auguste Rodin

Elmer Bischoff

David Park

David Park

More...

Sketchbooks: David Hockney

 

David Hockney, an avid draughtsman and one of Britain's leading artists,  discusses why a brush captures reality better than a camera in this interview with Andrew Marr of The Guardian:

"David Hockney laughs, pulls open a wooden drawer and rummages through scores of identical small black books. He pulls one out, checks the first page for a date, and throws it over. It turns out to be the visual record of a few recent days in London - small, fast sketches recording his journey on the top deck of a number nine bus, then visits to exhibitions, a record of a funeral service at the Brompton Oratory, a couple of hours with the plaster casts in the V&A, a restaurant meal with friends, Hyde Park corner and an Evening Standard headline reflected in a silver bowl he'd just bought. Each one is done with a nylon Japanese watercolour brush..." 

Images from Hockney's sketchbooks 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2003/jan/06/art.artsfeatures

Antony Van Dyck, 1599-1641

Sir Anthony van Dyck, a student of Rubens, was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England.      -Wikipedia