CHAPTER 6

D R A W I NG

INTRODUCTION• A great deal of drawing is receptive which means

we use it to attempt to capture the physical appearance of something before us.

• Another type of drawing is projective which means we may draw something that already exists in our minds, either as a memory of something we have seen or a vision of something we imagine

• The general tendency among today’s artists in Europe and the United States seems to be toward projective types of drawing

AUGUSTE RODINWhen French sculptor Auguste Rodin saw a troupe

of Cambodian folk dancers in 1906, he was so transfixed by their graceful movements that he went to their rehearsals and made dozens of drawings. His Cambodian Dancer is one of these, heightened with washes of watercolor and crayon. The drawing seems almost as spontaneous and fluid as the dancer’s movements that inspired it.

Auguste RodinCAMBODIAN DANCER. 1906.

LEONARDO DA VANCI

Leonardo da Vinci kept many of his exploratory drawings and writings in notebooks. He drew this study of Three Seated Figures next to idea sketches for some mechanical devices.

Leonardo da VinciTHREE SEATED FIGURES AND STUDIESOF MACHINERY. 1490

GUILLERMO DEL TORO

Guillermo del Toro, director of Hellboy, 3993, and other films, keeps a sketchbook for jotting notes and ideas. The pages here show his musings about the desire for fame, meeting other directors, and sketches of some strange beings that found their way into his 2006 feature Pan’s Labyrinth.

Guillermo del ToroPages from SKETCHBOOK.2006.

VINCENT VAN GOGHVan Gogh learned a great deal about both seeing

and painting through his practice of drawing. He was just beginning his short career as an artist when he made the drawing of a Carpenter. Although stiff, and clumsy in proportion, the drawing reveals van Gogh’s careful observation and attention to detail. Yet he struggled to render the world with pencil and crayon, as his letters to his brother Theo show. In one of these notes, he recalled the difficulty and a breakthrough.

Vincent van GoghOLD MAN WITH HIS HEADIN HIS HANDS. 1882.

PURPOSES OF DRAWING3 Ways Drawings Can Function:

• As a notation, sketch, or record of something seen, remembered, or imagined

• As a study or preparation for another, usually larger and more complex work such as a sculpture, a building, a film, a painting, or another drawing

• As an end in itself, a complete work of art 

MICHELANGELO & PICASSO• These artists and many more used

simple, tiny, and quickly done sketches as a beginning point to later create large masterpieces

• An example of this is Michelangelo’s study of the LIBYAN SIBYL.

Michelangelo.Studies for the LIBYAN SIBYL onthe Sistine Chapel ceiling. 1510.

ARTISTS• Some artists didn’t think of these

sketches as finished artwork they did keep these tiny rough drafts as a reminder of their creative process that lead them to their final piece.

PABLO PICASSO.FIRST COMPOSITION STUDY FOR GUERNICA. 1937.

CARTOONS• Another form of preparatory

drawing• Its original meaning was a full-

sized drawing made as a pilot for a large work in another medium, usually a painting or mosaic.

DRAWING TOOLS• Some that tools used are 3 types

of hatching.• These are hatching, cross-

hatching and contour hatching

EXAMPLE OF CROSS-HATCHING

Charles White.PREACHER. 1952.

DRY MEDIA• Includes pencil, charcoal, conte, crayon,

and pastel.• The surface grain of the paper is also

know as tooth.• There are different techniques that can

be used when drawing with pencil in order to produce a range of values. Line quality is determined by the hardness of the pencil.

EXAMPLE OF PENCIL

Judith MurrayOBSIDIAN. 1988.

MORE DRY MEDIA• Charcoal is easy to smudge, blur

or erase and can produce a wide range of light to dark values

• Conte crayon is semi-dark chalk mixed with oil

• Pastels are similar to chalk and allow for less detail

EXAMPLE OF CHARCOAL

Georgia O’KeefeBANANA FLOWER. 1933.

EXAMPLE OF CONTE CRAYON

Georges Seurat.L’ECHO. 1983.

EXAMPLE OF PASTELS

Rosalba Carriera.PORTRAIT OF A GIRL WITH A BUSSOLA. 1725.

LIQUID MEDIA• The most common drawing liquids are

black or colored inks• There are washes of ink thinned with

water that some brush drawings made of• These ink drawings can have similarities

of water color paintings• In liquid media, felt- and fiber-tipped

pens are widely used as well as the pen-and-ink media

FOUNTAIN IN THE HOSPITAL GARDEN• By Vincent van Gogh is a perfect

example of liquid media• van Gogh used a Japanese bamboo pen

and ink for the lines in the drawing• He varies the darkness of lines by using

both full strength and diluted ink

Vincent van Gogh.THE FOUNTAIN IN THEHOSPITAL GARDEN. 1889.

HOKUSAI• Japanese artist• A very skilled draftsman• Said to have created about 13,000

prints and drawings• He has a good-humored statement

about the development of his artistic ability that should encourage all artists to persevere.

GRAPHIC NOVELS/COMICS• Chronological art form based on

drawing• In the early 20th century, most American

newspapers contained a few pages of amusing comics

• By the 1950s, American comics were so well-known that the trade began to control its own content with the Comics Code Authority.

FAMOUS COMICS• Art Speigelman and Francoise Mouly founded

the magazine Raw. This magazine was made to collect and publish the most innovative work. It was ran for 11 years

• Gary Panter was a contributor to Raw. His drawn art includes two graphic novels based on Dante’s Inferno.

• The 9/11 events threw him into depression and he turned to making very short comics such as BACK TO NATURE.

• Gilbert Hernandez along with his brothers created one of the longerst-running alternative comics, Love and Rockets.

LOVE AND ROCKETS

GROWTH OF COMICS• Increasing recognition of graphic novels

has led to major publishers to search for artists and produce their work.

• One of the most famous was PERSEPOLIS by Marjan Satrapi

• PERSEPOLIS is a story of a girl growing up in a progressive family in Tehran, Iran in the years before the 1980s.

MARJANE SATRAPI.PAGE FROM PERSEPOLIS. 2001.

CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES• Many artist use drawing in combination

with other media in finished works.• Some use it as a tool to free the

imagination by giving tangible form to ideas.

• Some use drawing as an aid to understanding drawings from the past

• A few artists use drawing to create works in new ways using new media.

CHRISTINE HIEBERT• Makes lines directly on walls with the

blue tape that painters use. • In works that she does in exhibits, her

lines affect our perception of space.• In UNTITLED, she interrupted the clean

horizontals and verticals of a gallery with diagnols of varying thickness.

Christine Hiebert.UNTITLED. 2004.

BARRY MCGEE• Barry McGee removes drawing from the

kingdom of “fine art” and brings in to everyone’s level.

• In UNTITLED 2006, he used pens he bought in a drug store. The four heads resemble doodles that we might make while talking on the phone or in class. The paper was found in a dumpster and he bought the frame at a thrift store.