A study is a drawing done in preparation for a finished piece, either as a sort of visual note taking exercise or as a form of practice, so that when you come to make the actual artwork, you get it right.
Studies can be used to understand the problems involved in rendering subjects and to plan the elements to be used in finished works, and written notes alongside visual images can allow the viewer to share the artist's process of getting to know the subject. In a recent post I looked at the studies made by David Reed for his paintings; his annotated drawings are central to his creative process, helping not only with the development of his ideas, they also document the creative process itself.
Sketches are typically drawn quickly to capture basic information, to rough out compositions or put down an idea before it is forgotten. Studies are more finished pieces made to get a deeper understanding of a specific aspect of the work, such as colour, tonal range, or how things are shaped, they are much more deliberate and bare a close relationship with the intended finished work. A relationship between Seurat's and Edward Hopper's work can help to give us a clearer idea of the difference between a study and a sketch.
The studies below for Hopper's 'Nighthawks' and 'Office at night' tell us about composition and tonal value, the light sources are all in place and shadow as an essential part of composition is clear. All that is missing is the colour.
Studies can be used to understand the problems involved in rendering subjects and to plan the elements to be used in finished works, and written notes alongside visual images can allow the viewer to share the artist's process of getting to know the subject. In a recent post I looked at the studies made by David Reed for his paintings; his annotated drawings are central to his creative process, helping not only with the development of his ideas, they also document the creative process itself.
Sketches are typically drawn quickly to capture basic information, to rough out compositions or put down an idea before it is forgotten. Studies are more finished pieces made to get a deeper understanding of a specific aspect of the work, such as colour, tonal range, or how things are shaped, they are much more deliberate and bare a close relationship with the intended finished work. A relationship between Seurat's and Edward Hopper's work can help to give us a clearer idea of the difference between a study and a sketch.
The studies below for Hopper's 'Nighthawks' and 'Office at night' tell us about composition and tonal value, the light sources are all in place and shadow as an essential part of composition is clear. All that is missing is the colour.
Edward Hopper: Study for Nighthawks
Edward Hopper: Study for office at night
Edward Hopper: Sketch: Nighthawks
Hopper: A sketch that has become a study of shadow and composition
You often find in Hopper's drawings that what might start out as a sketched out idea, very soon becomes a meditation on something. In the case of the drawing above, he reminds us that in our perceived reality, shadows are just as substantial as walls and floors or seas and skies. By looking at these preparatory drawings, we can see his mind working. Each drawing works as a layer of meaning, one that can help you to think about how Hopper's visual language creates meaning for you as an individual.
This is why his painting are things you can come back to over and over again, because each time you do, you can sense another layer of material thinking. You might visit his work and become fascinated by the underlying geometry of forms, then at another time the way he composes uses mass, by using forms that push themselves across his two dimensional surfaces as if they were tectonic plates. Light and shadow are for Hopper key signifiers, they allow exterior and interior spaces to interpenetrate each other and help to build an emotional world for his people to inhabit. Placement is vital, not just in terms of geometrical relationships but in terms of emotional presence. Each human figure occupying a solid space that says 'I'm here' and yet at the same time they are placed with such internal firmness that although a body position may indicate awareness of others, their internal world seems to be wrapped up in themselves. In a Hopper you get a sense that although others are in the room, and even if it appears that they might be speaking to each other, they are not really listening. This is where hopper's layers begin to kick in, as it is at this point that he offers us a view of the human condition. One whereby we know, no matter how hard we try, we can never know what others are thinking of us and that there are moments when we realise that everything is staged. His painting are staged by going through a process of being sketched and then these sketches become studies, studies that are really rehearsals, in the same way that each encounter we have with others in life, can become a rehearsal for the performance of who we think we are.
Seurat:: Young Woman: study for 'Un Dimanche à la Grande Jatte'
The people in Seurat's painting are 'on parade' they are not just out for a stroll in the park, they are presenting images of themselves that they wish others to see. Roles are again being played out, but Seurat visualises these roles in a different way to Hopper. He senses that the roles are ephemeral, that beneath the posing and fashion lies something much more fundamental. He is like Hopper seeking the frozen moment when we become aware that the curved arc of a dog's tail, is as important to an experience as the shadow of a tree or the shape of a hat, but at the same time what is captured in that frozen moment, is a reminder of the insubstantial nature of everything. It is as if the clouds we watch were to one day form themselves into a vision of a day in our life, a moment that would be gone as soon as it arrived.
We can date both Hopper and Seurat's images by examining the clothes people wear. But we are not time bound by these details. Just as we are not time bound by the details of clothing carved into a Egyptian statue, in all these cases we are overpowered by the timelessness of the image. Seurat's seated figures are always seated, their forms are emanations that flow out of the shadows they sit within.
Like Hopper, Seurat also produces studies of the space he is going to people with figures. He probably went to the park early in the morning when long shadows are cast by the rising sun, a time when a lone dog was let out to exercise. The shadows help him to think about structure and the relationship between light, mass and space. Shadows hold for all artists some sort of wonderment, they impose themselves on the visual field, with the same force as the objects that cast them. The insubstantial ghost of an object which is its shadow, being in perception as solid as a rock.
Seurat's trees are like ghosts of trees, his monkey is the ghost of a monkey, or one seen through the early morning mist. All of the information Seurat was deriving from these drawings will be brought together with his colour studies in his monumental painting 'Un Dimanche à la Grande Jatte'. However for myself, as someone who holds drawing as central to the way I try to understand the world, it is the studies on paper that move me far more than the final painting.
If you look closely at Seurat's drawing of a monkey above, you can see a texture formed partly by the ridged lines of the paper running through the image. This tells us that Seurat was using a laid paper. This type of paper was made by hand, using a wire sieve stretched across a rectangular mould. A papermaker would dip the mould into a vat containing a diluted pulp of fibrous material, then lift it out, tilt it to spread the pulp evenly over the sieve and, as the water drained out between the wires, shake the mould to lock the fibres together. In the process, the pattern of the sieve's wires was imparted to the paper sheet. The laid pattern itself consists of a series of wide-spaced 'chain' lines lines parallel to the shorter sides of the sheet and more narrowly spaced 'laid' lines, at right angles to them. In effect the paper sheet is a thin cast of the mould, a ghost of an activity involving workers who endured often very poor working conditions, whereby paper fibres were breathed in all through the long working day and which therefore brought on various and serious lung illnesses. These workers would also need a break on a Sunday from their hard labour, and perhaps, just one of them was out first thing in the morning walking their dog when Seurat made is first study of that space in the park that would eventually become the such a celebrated painting.
See also:
Drawing hands More thoughts on Seurat
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