Skill and drawing

* * * I have no experience how art is taught in USA. If Mani has it right, he might benefit more of the current teaching than from the trivia he promotes.

Lauri, I don't know if you ever saw Gary Larson's 'Far Side' cartoons in Finland, but they were really funny. Reading your post made me think of one that was hanging on the wall in the Art Department at UC Davis when I was enrolled there.

It showed two cavemen, a journeyman and an apprentice, who were working on a large stone wheel. The apprentice had a small tool box next to him, and the journeyman was holding a rock, saying: 'I told you to bring me a hammer. This is a Cresent wrench. No...well...maybe it is a hammer?'

I'm not sure I agree with you entirely about technical drawing, though. I mean that you do develop skills (as any engineer knows, not spilling ink is somewhat of a skill, all things considered.) But I'm talking about learning how to use tools - with practice you become better at it, thus developing 'skills.'

I've done about every form of technical drawing there is, but here's where I got stuck: I can't even remember the name of the projection - it is for laying out sheet material such as plywood for boat building. Since it will only bend in one direction at a time, you have to lay it out with a series of radiating lines originating from a calculated point. I suppose if I stuck with it I could have learned the technique, but I got frustrated because I couldn't visualize how to calculate the origin points. I think the 'skill' of this was being fluent in abstract math and geometry, which was never my forte. If I couldn't see it with my mind's eye, it was very difficult.

The reason anatomy, (read this figure drawing) is used in schools is because it's a great method for teaching observation. The body is subtle, shadowed. To make a good drawing of a figure you must learn both how to see and what makes a drawing interesting. Too many people who study anatomy make anatomical figures but bad drawings.

Hi Erik, that is Developing a Surface. The shape is conical with varying radi. As far as I know, there is no practival way of calculating the origo. You give the chine line and guess an origo. That gives you the keel line. Then make a better guess or alter the chine line.

There is some math - now I remember. At Roskilde Denmark they reverse engineer viking boats from planks. Matching the nail holes of two adjacent planks lets them calculate the curvature if the seam.

Thanks for comments. If you mean _only_ rendering by image, then I agree. For me image is markings on a paper.

The anatomy section I agree. So much of the scientific base. The Barclay's Anatomy for the Artist is to the point. Accurate anatomy, detailed rendering and virtually useless because the poor sense of volumes.

Good point. When I draw, my goal is usually to make something beautiful. Therefore, the primary purpose of every mark I put on the paper is to make my drawing more beautiful - not to develop an image or make the image more realistic. My drawings are done in a traditional realistic style, but realism is not the goal, just a means of obtaining it.

More good points. I remember very little of the details from the anatomy courses which I took. But what I do remember is how to observe and see the details in the figure. Anatomy itself is knowledge which is easily forgotten. Observation is a skill. Like riding a bike, once you learn it you never forget.

To get back to the main thread topic, it's important to realize that our visual system doesn't work by having the eyes feed the brain images to look at. The process of vision is about acquiring knowledge of the world around us. When we try to draw in the realistic style, we must use that knowledge to construct on the drawing surface a 2 dimensional image in an optically correct manner. This ability to do so is a skill, but just one of many skills that the artist may choose to nurture and develop. There is nothing particularly magic or all-important about that one particular skill. Some artists are good at and some artists are good at other things.

- Bob C.

Ah, yes. 'Conical projection' - that's the term I couldn't remember. You mean all this time I thought there was a way to find the origin point, and that it was a judgement issue? I'll be damned. That never occured to me. No wonder I couldn't find it in the textbooks.

If you have two arbitrary curves ( the chine and the keel line) there is no guarantee that they fit on a conical projection. They usually dont. That is why it is a trial and error procedure.

I kept thinking about the reverse engineering of viking ships. If you have two curved planks with mathcing nail holes, there is only one shape how they fit. I would do it with replica planks by trial and error , but I guess the Roskilde engineers use a finite element method, dividing the planks to triangles and calculating the curvature where the edges fit.

Our visual system selects the facts so that they make sense. When we draw realistically, we usually not construct an optically correct image. We construct an image that gives the best posiibe illusion. Sometimes it is possible with minimal drawing. There the artist provides just the necessary cues, and the observer completes it to make sense.

Adept application of a tool, like perspective is indeed a skill. It can improve a drawing by convincing the viewer of the artist's original vision.

But observation is not sufficient for the ability to convince the viewer of the image you want him to see. I have observed faced for uncountable hours but it is necessarily to master the skill of modeling with several shades in order to convince the viewer of shapes and roundness of the face. Otherwise we are left with just a flat suggestion of a face that the viewer will find no pleasure or interest in. I have not learned this skill in modeling yet, and I may need a teacher to learn it. But the more I consider the matter, the more I see its value.

If you want to draw a human being knowledge of how bones and muscles affect the outline and shading of a figure are important if you want to convey the image of a living thing to the viewer.

true, drawing can be subjective.

Not quite the same. One studies anatomy to improve figure drawing.

is used in schools is because

Observation also developes the ability to make a three dimensional image work on the two-dimensional surface of the support. But having to observe to learn the techniques of classical modeling (shading) would be like re-inventing the wheel. No matter how long I look at a figure I cannot 'see' the method of putting in darks and greys that the give a figure shape and body.