Shadow drawing

When we were children we all at one time or another tried out shadow drawing. I've reflected on several issues associated with this activity a few times already, but perhaps not quite got down to the essence as to why this way of drawing is so magical.

How to create shadow creatures

There is a wonderful moment when you put your hands together and begin making shapes in front of a direct light source, a moment when the shadow formed begins to look like the creature you had in your head. Hands become a bird flying or a dog's head or a rabbit, but at the same time, the shadow belongs to you. It is an extension of yourself that stretches out into the world, the shadow is both of you and something that you are trying to represent.
Some time ago I wrote and illustrated a short story, whereby a creature tried to cut away its shadow. It is a common story often about someone who tries to escape their dark side, or their subconscious selves, usually with disastrous consequences. Hans Christian Andersen's "The Shadow." and 'The Fisherman and His Soul' by Oscar Wilde are typical examples.

Reattaching a Shadow, Peter Pan, Disney Studios, 1953

I first came across the idea as a boy on going to see Peter Pan; Disney's animated film enchanted me and after rewatching after many years, it still does.

The shadow has always fascinated me as someone who draws, because it is mythically part of drawing's history, as well as giving us physical information, such as where light is coming from, shadows can be used to construct a psychological context. Whenever we see shadows we “read” them and their very ambiguity can add drama or existential weight to the situation.

Rembrandt: Self portrait

By casting most of his face in shadow, Rembrandt suggests that he possesses a deeply complex personality, one that is hard to read, but powerful in its very ambiguity.

William Collins "Rustic Civility"

William Collins' painting "Rustic Civility", portrays the landowner only by the shadow he casts, suggesting that land ownership, casts a shadow over all who live on lands that are owned by others.

The cast shadows of tall buildings

When walking in the street we are very aware of the shadows cast by tall buildings, and feel cold as the sun is blocked from our view. If something is large enough to cast its shadow over us we can feel dominated or dwarfed by the presence of something so much bigger than ourselves. Conversely Lin Yutang stated, "When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set"; an aphorism that seems very apt at the moment. In fact the dictionary definition of to cast a shadow over something is "to spoil a good situation with something unpleasant".

I pointed out earlier that shadows are interwoven with the mythic history of drawing itself. Image making according to Pliny, began with tracing an outline around a man’s shadow. This act was to lead eventually to the art of painting. He goes on to then describe how three dimensional modelling began and he states that modelling portraits from clay was first invented by Butades, a potter. Pliny states that Butades invented this new art so that his daughter could remember the face of her lover, who was about to set off on a long journey. He drew in outline on the wall next to him the shadow of his daughter's lover. Then he carefully pressed clay around the interior of this outline and made it into a relief.  The emotive nature of the situation is embedded in that first shadow drawing, the painful moment of a lover’s departure is located in an image that sits between love and loss. Eros and Thanatos, the life and death instincts, attached to the shadow from its very inception as an aid to drawing.   

Victor Stoichita in 'A Short History of the Shadow', points out the symbolic connection between “shadow, soul and a person’s double.” and goes on to state that ”this would indicate that the result of the collaboration between the potter and his daughter was the symbolic creation of a ‘living’ double, a surrogate figure difficult to understand without visualising the ritual actions we exert over it.” (The portrait was eventually taken to a temple and put on display there.)

Joseph-Benoît Suvée would make a painting of Pliny's thoughts about the invention of painting, this time though it is Butades' daughter tracing around the shadow of her loved one.

Joseph-Benoît Suvée, Butades or the Origin of Painting, 1791.

What this tracing around shadows is doing though is to create surrogates of real things and this creates a particular situation, whereby copies of reality start to become more substantial than reality itself. Butades' daughter's lover may be lost at sea, but his portrait could be seen for many years afterwards hanging in the temple. This situation is further complicated when we look at Plato's shadow metaphor. In his metaphor of the cave, he points out that we never actually see reality, only shadows of it. We are therefore forgetful of what reality is, and can confuse the real with the virtual, and in doing so we lead shadow lives of illusion. 

The image of how to create shadow creatures that I used to open this post, reminded me of how ancient and deep rooted is our relationship with other animals. Shamanic traditions include the harnessing of animal spirits as guides or messengers, and the shadow forms of animals, cast by humans are easily made by the light of a fire at night in a cave. Moving human shadows when seen alongside and cast over the top of some of the earliest painted images of animals, must have seemed as if they were interacting with those images, as well it seeming that forms were morphing from human to animal. I can still remember when I was a small child my grandfather making shadow creatures, and how magical the transformation of hands into animals seemed. I suspect there were artist shadow makers in neolithic times, who were very adept at casting the shadow forms of various animals and humans in iconic poses, onto the walls of caves. If only I could have been a fly on the wall and could watch, as they acted out ancient mythic scenarios in their shadow play.

As I weave these various threads together, it becomes clear that shadows are deeply significant and in their very insubstantiality in comparison to the things that they are cast from, they become like ghosts or spirits. Perhaps they gave to human beings their first way of visualising such things, after all, the dead can still cast a shadow and as the earth moves around the sun, that shadow will continue to move, even though the body will lie still. 

Sometimes shadows don't look like what casts them. The drawing above being a playful account of what was at one time a grudge match. 

Sometimes an image is itself meant to exist as a  shadow or ghost, the one below of my father mowing, was made in response to him dying of a stroke as he cut the lawn. He has always been able to cast a shadow in the form of a presence often felt in times of stress or difficulty, his critical gaze still falling on me as a long dark shadow, even as I type these words. 

Ghost mower

Shadows and related phenomena remind us of the uncanny and a world of 'the other', but being so 'everyday', they also remind us of the fact that these things are always with us. 

Reference:

Victor Stoichita (1997) A Short History of the Shadow London: Reaktion Books

See also:

Arvak  A short story

Shadows and the magic of transformation

Articulated collage and shadow play

Tone and emotional value

The vignette

Images as ghosts