Welcome
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The Importance of
Drawing
Studying
drawing and
learning to draw well was the wisest and most
significant step in my
artistic development. Discovering how to look, how to make my
hand
follow what my eye sees, enables me to explore the visual world in
a way unachievable by camera or by any visual technology.
Maybe
it's the eye connecting directly with the brain,
maybe it's how the eye
can
choose what to explore and whether to examine the complexity or
simplicity of the image. Maybe it is human interconnection
with
the world, the human interpretation of that connection.
Whatever
it is, there is no substitute for drawing.
It's when I'm
drawing that I discover
traits and
nuances that otherwise I would have missed, and it is through drawing
that I establish a close relationship with my subject,
especially when
I find
those ah-HA moments, the thrills of finding hidden stuff. And
it
is here
that I get ideas for composition, thoughts that the subject suggests to
me
while I'm exploring it, concepts that would never surface without
investigating the subject through drawing.
The artists we continue to revere, even though some lived
centuries ago, drew prolifically. But as
drawing became unimportant in the history of art, the visual image
fell apart,
giving way to heady ideas and conceptual practices which
disintegrated into something else. For some time now, some
artists
have returned to exploring the visual image, realizing that
much
can be found there and much can still be said that was unnoticed by the
old masters..
We forget that each artist brings to any chosen image a
unique
experience, a distinctive point of view, an individualized skill.
This
combination can create an inventional piece each time an artist puts a
hand to paint, no matter what the image.
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| Leonardo's
Old Man with Water c. 1510 |
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Leonardo's
Trivulzio Monument Studies c. 1508 |
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My Creative Process
My creative moment begins whenever I
catch myself being transfixed. It might be an image in
nature,
the
play of light on a surface, the body language of folks talking or
working or just an ah-ha moment. That moment usually rides in my brain
for a while. Sometimes I grab the camera and capture a bunch
of
photos, sometimes I reach for the sketchbook, and sometimes I scribble
on
something a verbal impression of what's got my attention. If
I
ignore it, I feel agitated, irritated and sense a loss.
Next, I begin making sketchbook
studies, often making written comments about ideas I'm having while
sketching. Sometimes I'll use pencil for these sketches,
sometimes watercolor.
Although I approach a new idea with some compositional notion, It's
usually while I'm making
studies that the compositional plan develops and the painting idea
comes into focus. After making several composition studies
and coming up with something I can live with, I move to
the painting,
But many changes are bound to happen.
During the development of the painting, the
entire idea can shift, the painting can do a total 180, taking me down
a road totally unexpected. But this is
part of the fun and the excitement. And when this happens,
there's a surprise at
the finish of the work, not unlike a kid on Christmas morning.
I used to worry about whether I was
being
creative. Given the
diversity in today's visual art world and the chasm between attitudes
about what is worthy, about whether the artist
is being inventive or repeating what's already been done, an artist can
lose the sense of self just trying to understand it all.
Read Art
News then The
Artist's Magazine and you'll see what I mean.
I finally concluded that what's
important is not whether I fit into today's trends, or any
pre-determined style or even whether I'm breaking new ground,
but
what matters is whether I'm
following my own path.
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The
Importance of
Craftsmanship
There's a world of difference between
competence and
ignorance. Every form of art--music, dance, writing, theatre,
visual art-- has its concomitant craft which the artist must learn and
with which the artist must become literate before he/she has a real
command of the language of that art form.
Nobody questions that, without Itzhak
Perlman's mastery
of the craft of
violin playing, no way could he express music with such
fluidity,
confidence and adroitness, yet the painter is, in the opinion of many,
exempt from learning the
craft of his/her medium. It's hard to understand why modern
critics
acclaim works exuding no skilled craftsman's hand in the visual arts,
yet dancers must know their craft, actors must know their craft, and
musicians must know theirs.
What
any master craftsman knows is that only within mastery is
there freedom
to create, that because of that mastery real creativity and
inventiveness is possible. Without the craft, much of what
gets
called creative or inventive or cutting-edge is nothing more
than inept.
No
wonder jokes are made about visual art. The mainstream has
taught
the public that mere self-expression is art, which the public has
accepted but just can't
quite believe as valid. Yet so many emerging young artists
are
taught that if they study to learn the craft, they will lose their
creativity and become imitators of their teachers. Nothing
could
be more false.
Having devoted forty-three years
of my life to teaching visual art, I can tell you with confidence that
the process of learning how to paint has nothing to do with being
creative, with being expressive or with imitating anybody.
Generic
techniques can be taught. The student's individual style
begins
to emerge as he/she practices those techniques and begins to put one's
own unique bend or twist onto them. It's no different from
learning handwriting, where first we learn to form the letters, then
how
to put them together, then our own handwriting emerges as we
practice what we have learned.
Michael Parkes,
"The
Juggler"
Oil on Wood, 1985 |
Andrew Wyeth,
"Kuerner's Farm".
Watercolor on Paper, 1983
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And just as many can tell by hearing whether it's
Perlman or Joshua
Bell
playing the violin, you can recognize an Andrew Wyeth or a Michael
Parkes without seeing the signature. The style grew
naturally,
the images chosen grew intuitively, but the craft took a lot of hard
work.
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