YouTube is full of how to do life drawing videos. Tricks and
tips are everywhere to be found, but what I didn’t really find was any one
video that opened out the reality of the situation. However in most of the ones
I did look at there would be one small bit that I recognised as being a kernel
of truth. On the whole though I think they are shockingly bad. Here are a
couple of the ‘better’ ones.
This time lapse video looks at tone, it’s not bad but does
need questioning.
The initial blocking in process using charcoal is fine, (somewhat overworked and fiddling with finish eventually kills off the image) but what
isn’t clearly explained is the work done beforehand. It is easy to see that
whoever is drawing has done a lot of it before. They have a confidence in
handling the charcoal that comes from hours of practice and the blocked areas
are roughly in the right place, which means that the drawer is used to using a good
solid measurement system. The other issue
is that the life model itself needs to be lit in a certain way, so that tonal
variation is distinct and creates a regular movement from light to dark in
order to create clear solids. This can
only happen with one clear light source, so the model is probably in a darkened
room and is lit by a single light source, which historically would be by either
a window or candle, in this case probably an angle poise lamp. Control of light
is vital in any life room situation and is often the way that you can tell the
difference between the life-room portrait and the taken from photo portrait.
The observation of light within Western European image making has of course a long history and one that still
continues. I shall therefore digress into a very short potted history of working with light so bear with
me.
During the 14th and 15th centuries two
approaches to the realistic depiction of light developed. In Southern Europe,
(The Italian Renaissance) light was seen as a device to give clarity to the way
artists could model form. It was used to reinforce the solidity given to a perspective
solid. The main painting method used was fresco, which as a painting method
lends itself to working on an architectural scale, has a naturally light
tonality and lends itself to very simple, bold forms.
Massacio detail
In Northern Europe (The Flemish Primitives)
the rendering of light was used to give reality to material texture, the glint
of reflected light off gold plate or the textural surface interplay of light
reflected off a woven textile. The main painting method was the newly
discovered technique of oil painting.
Which lends itself to work on panel rather than directly on walls, is
tonally darker, white pigment being used to lighten colours and can be applied
in tiny areas and in glazes which lends itself to the depiction of very precise
detail.
Van Eyck detail
In the 16th and 17th century the
control and modelling of light became used much more as an emotive device.
Caravaggio used dramatic contrasts between light and dark to give religious
drama and a heightened theatrical realism to images (the Catholic Reformation).
Caravaggio detail
Rembrandt although heavily influenced by Caravaggio uses a softer edged but still highly charged dark / light engagement with lighting to depict
the emotional life of the individual (the Protestant revolution)
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The 18th and 19th centuries see an
engagement with atmospheric effects and the ability of paint to capture the
fleeting effects of seen moments. In England Constable and Turner seek ‘naturalism’ a little later in
France this period draws to a close with Impressionism, the beginnings of
modern art and the rise of the camera. The camera and its lens now take centre
stage as to how we think about light and receive images of the world.
Post impressionism and onwards artists start to engage with
the camera and the introduction of new artificial light sources such as gas and
electricity changes the way we see surfaces, in particular how we paint flesh.
Selection and cropping issues that derive from the use of
cameras as highlighted by Degas continue to influence modern composition,
changing film stock and in particular the emergence of colour film as the 20th
century moves along proves to be as influential to the development of new painting materials, the emergence of gas light, electric lights, neons etc into the everyday
environment shifts our perception of the night/day divide. The cinema introduces us to
huge images, floating colour fields and a celebrity dream world. From the stripped down images of Edward
Hopper via the verisimilitude of Richard Estes to Chuck Close, early photorealism through Pop art Gerhard
Richter, via the new photorealists like Raphaella Spence and Yigal Ozeri via Eric Fischl to
the informal celebrity portraits of Elizabeth Peyton, painters continue to have
a dialogue with photographs and images created in response to different lighting conditions. The ability of the camera to focus and the concept
of a depth of field allowed painters to reengage with sharp and soft focus, and
the arrival of mobile cameras changed painters’ awareness of presence and
spacetime, thus changing the nature of how painters read surfaces as ‘screens’.
Finally the introduction of image editing software such as PhotoShop has brought
to painting photography’s own loss of reality, no longer is the camera a verifier
of reality, its digital products are see as potential fictions just as much as
paintings are.
An alternative history of
more painterly figurative paintings runs alongside that of painters
responding directly to photography, for instance Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon
etc. a history which it now appears is actually impossible to separate out from
the influence of photography, artists at the time often ‘hiding’ their reliance
on photographic images and highlighting the ‘hard won image’ aspect of their
work and their debt to Cezanne.
But now back to the liferoom.
It can be that the life-room appears separate to these
issues, but it can’t be. The model will be lit by several neons, thus
flattening the image. The tutor may well therefore remove the ceiling’s central
neon light sources and replace them with a low anglepoise lamp or similar
source of light. If so the bulb will probably cast a more yellow light,
student’s drawing boards will be lit by spots, another artificial light source
entering the situation, drawings will be photographed using mobiles and looked
at during the evening on those mobiles, all of these issues effecting how
images are built and constructed as an evening progresses.
The fact that all those life drawing videos are available is
also inescapable, and I’m sure you will watch them, if not for any other reason
that they can be funny and yet compelling, because they are so embedded into the mythology of figure drawing. Here’s another one.
This is interesting as you can trace this method all the way
back to Durer. Durer spent a lifetime searching for perfect proportions for the
human body and his grid systems are echoed in the way Andrew Loomis breaks down
the figure into particular easy to remember proportional relationships. Something
that was initially during the Renaissance a search for divine proportion has
now become a method for teaching graphic illustration. As I pointed out though
there is always something to learn and the point about understanding the sphere
as a three dimensional solid is a vital one, without that fundamental grasp of
basic form, how to draw cubes, pyramids etc so that they are solid and in some
form of working perspective, basic issues such as how to draw a foot so that it
takes the weight of the body are so much harder to tackle. This is why we
always start with issues of measurement and how to judge proportion.
Durer
Uglow
There are several life drawing classes in the area. One of the best is held at Inkwell in Chapel Allerton and a long running and well established one is run by the painter Tom Wood, however it is held just outside Leeds. Tom is a good painter and if any of you are thinking of working in paint from life, Tom is a good person to work with. See
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