What We Do When We Draw

"We should talk less and draw more. Personally I would like to renounce speech altogether, and like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say in sketches." Goethe 

"The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing... should be taught to every child just as writing is..." Ruskin

I've just returned from teaching a drawing course at Dillington House, so I thought I'd take a look at what acknowledged masters and art experts have to say about the subject. What I found was a wealth of quotes, stressing drawing's importance that were vehement in their praise of drawing almost to the point of dogmatism. From Berger to De Botton, Degas to Dali, all the comments I found pointed to drawing's honesty and directness; its value as a discipline and as an aid to comprehension. And the general consensus of opinion was "Won't draw? Can't paint'!

"I can see it," a student once complained to me, "so why can't I draw it?"

"Because you don't fully understand it," I replied.

But when we look at a person, a pot or a pear, exactly what is it that we don't understand?

The kind of seeing we habitually engage in is a kind of glib exercise in orientation. It's our way of reassuring ourselves that everything is just the way it normally is. Our over-loaded brains reduce everyday visual stimuli to a series of symbols that we are all too quick to discard. Like a sight-seer on a tour bus, we click the shutter and move on.
               


But this facile way of using the gift of sight is nothing new:

"Let two persons go out for a walk; the one a good sketcher, the other having no taste of the kind. Let them go down a green lane. There will be a great difference in the scene as perceived by the two individuals. The one will see a lane and trees... and that's all! But what will the sketcher see? His eye is accustomed to search into the causes of beauty, and penetrate the minutest loveliness... Is not this worth seeing? Yet if you are not a sketcher you will pass along the green lane, and when you come home again, have nothing to say or to think about it, but that you went down such and such a lane." Ruskin

The full quote is on my post for 26 November 2009.

                The purpose of drawing, then, is not to make a pretty picture but to become more intimate with your subject than mere looking allows. Drawing requires that you slow the pace of your life to a more manageable speed. It requires that you contemplate and think about the world around you. It also requires that you think about what you want.

"Unlike painting and sculpture [drawing] is the process by which the artist makes clear to himself, and not to the spectator, what he is doing." Ayrton

And dictionary definitions of the word 'draw' are manifold. It appears that when you draw, you might also be pulling out or dragging forth.

Like it or not, when you sit down in front of that person, pot or pear, you could also be on the point of revealing yourself to yourself.

"It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well." Clark

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Providence And The Failure of Eccentricity

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."  Goethe

I love this quote. Whenever I share it with those who are unfamiliar with it, I sense they have an instant feeling of kinship with it and a keen hope that it might, in fact, be true. But what does Goethe mean by Providence moving? The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines Providence as: the protective care of God or Nature as a spiritual power. That's a bit of a fuzzy notion for a rational, skeptical 21st Century human being, isn't it? Given that it will rain on your washing and toast always lands buttered side down, how can the whole universe get going just because you've made a decison? - a very dubious notion indeed, when you consider that there are now supposed to be more than 7 billion of us all trying to get God and Nature to dance the way we want them to.

My own explanation is a little less grandiose and based on recent findings in neuroscience about cognitive disinhibiton. According to Harvard University psychologist, Shelley Carson, 'cognitive disinhibition is the failure to ignore information that is irrelevant to current goals or to survival' and artists, apparently, have it in spades. Put simply, because artists are distracted neither by the rain on their washing or carpet fluff on their toast, their brains are free to concentrate on other stuff; stuff that other brains are filtering out: colours, textures, relationships, the strangeness of the familiar, the beauty of the banal and most importantly, new ways of doing things. Cognitive disinhibition also explains why so many arty types and geniuses are just that little bit eccentric.

If you want examples of the way the brain filters out 'irrelevancies', check out The Monkey Business Illusion or think about the last time you drove a new car and then noticed, as if for the first time, how many others just like yours were on the road.

I visited my oldest daughter in Manchester recently and we took in the Ford Madox Brown 
exhibtion at the fantastic Manchester City Art Gallery. When Harriet got home, she realised that FMB's The Last Of England, was on the cover of a book she's been reading for quite some time. 'I must walk around with my eyes shut,' she lamented. Not really. Ford Madox Brown's masterful evocation of the great emigrating movement of the 1850s just wasn't important to her.

Now it is.

Providence moving? It's been moving all along. I think what Goethe was talking about was giving ourselves a chance to catch up with it...

None So Blind...

Esref Armagan is an artist from Istanbul who paints pictures of sailing boats and lakes; quaint, red-roofed houses; windmills dotted on the hillside and multi-coloured fish swimming in the deep blue sea.

Armigan's paintings are charming but not remarkable enough to warrant all the fuss that’s been made of them, unless you are aware of the fact that this particular artist has been blind since birth.  Then you may wonder at the way he is able to incorporate into his paintings so many elements that cannot be felt.  His clouds, for example are fluffy and vapourous but how can a blind man feel his way around a cloud?  An apple, yes - but a cloud?  He gives everything its correct colour has a reasonable grasp of three-dimensional space and he can deal with perspective; his roads narrow into the distance, his houses diminish in size.  His pictures are as credible as those of many sighted people and in fact, a great deal more competent than most.  When asked how he does it, he says that he was taught, not formally, but by casual acquaintances who told him what the world looked like.

Obviously, the mechanics of actually getting the paint onto the paper and in the right place, is for him, a laborious matter and he’s had to memorise the location of all the colours in his paintbox.

But what intrigues me, is not how good he is, but how bad most of the rest of us are, if we can only produce art that is as good as a blind man’s.  Does this not illustrate that when it comes to picturing the world, we’re most of us hardly using our sight at all?

Our brains are swamped with so much information at every second of the day that we only take from a given situation those elements that are absolutely essential to the moment.

The rest we discard. 

And this is how we negotiate our way through the hazards and the humdrum of life; with incomplete information and assumptions about things rather than truths.

So while we’re swarming across the globe at ever-increasing speeds, pausing only to squeeze the button on our digital cameras, the artist must stop and taking his time, allow the world to slowly manifest itself around him. He or she will look at all the information that the rest of us have discarded and give it their full attention.

Because the artist knows that if you want to be able to paint the world you have to learn how to see it. And in order to truly see it, you first have to overcome your own blindness.

The Power of Art and the Art of Freedom

The one work of art I should love to see, that I know I never will see, is Filippo Lippi’s drawing of his Moorish master.  Done in 1423, when he was seventeen, with a fire-blackened stump on a white-washed wall, it was the portrait that freed him from slavery and saved him from a premature death, chained to the oars of a Moorish galley.  Regardless of it’s technical merit, it must rank as one of the most sublime examples ever of the power of art.

Filippo probably had little idea that the drawing would earn him his freedom, but something drove him to produce it all the same.  Perhaps he had some notion that by flattering his subject he might make his own life a little easier.  He had been a compulsive scribbler since the age of eight.  That is why when the Prior of the Carmelite Convent where he was educated, found that little Filippo had drawn all over his prayer book, he turned him over to a drawing master.  Now, with things at their worst, Filippo Lippi simply turned to what he knew best.

What’s certain is that we cannot ascribe to Filippo, at that time, the popular view of the artist as concupiscent, tormented genius churning out expensive artefacts for the privileged few.  And I doubt very much that his master had any thoughts about preserving the drawing or dismantling the white-washed wall and selling it.  As an investment then, it would have been worthless, but by granting him his freedom, Filippo’s owner made a direct investment in the life of the artist himself. The whole of Filippo Lippi’s life’s-work sprang from that moment, when the master of slaves gazed at his portrait and recognised in it more than his own face.

So how does this square with today’s painter?  Many of us paint as a hobby, a pastime - and we feel there’s something inferior about that idea, don’t we?  But is that actually any worse than painting for money?

What would you rather be? A professional who does it for money or an amateur who does it for love?

Many of us, like Fillippo Lippi, simply feel compelled to do it.  But why?  Are we day-dreaming?  Merely doodling our time away?  Do we mind at all if all we create fulfils its destiny in the dusty space under the bed?  If that’s so, is painting for us just an elaborate form of therapy?

Good paintings, though, seem to work on several other levels too.

Firstly, the colours and marks alone may engage us with their vivacity in the same abstract way as music can.

Secondly, there is the story that the artist is attempting to tell.  It may sound banal but every picture does tell a story. 

When Monet paints a landscape, for example, he might be telling you a story about the passing of time; when Millet paints a landscape, that story might be about the life of the French peasant; when Van Gogh paints his landscape, it could well be the story of his own mental disintegration.

Thirdly and most importantly, every painting needs a viewer, just as every piece of music needs a listener or it might as well never exist. 

And what happens in the mind of the viewer can be utterly magical.

Think of the Moorish slave master.

Be aware of the power of Art in the minds of others. 

And draw and paint, if you feel so compelled, but do it like Filippo, as if your freedom depended upon it.

The Camera Never Lies, But Only Tells Half The Truth

"Incredible oil painting that is so realistic it could be a photograph is voted the national gallery's best"

This banner headline was posted in the Mail On-line just over a week ago. You can read the full article here.

When it comes to depicting things, the camera is hard to beat. For speed, ease and the relative accuracy of the images it reproduces, whether as a still, a film or video, the camera is king. You point, you click and the entire scene is swallowed up by the lens and converted, in the blink of an eye into millions of coloured pixels that melt in your mind into the thing you think you saw. By the time even the most cack-handed amateur has done this, the artist hasn't even begun to unscrew the cap of his tube of titanium white, let alone lay out his brushes.

It wasn't always like this, of course. Time was, when the photographer was burdened with a debilitating amount of kit, his subject had to remain still for an age and nothing would end up on the photographic plate unless the whole scene had been lit by a small explosion of magnesium. Nevertheless, even in those days, artists knew that their days were numbered and sought ways to depict reality that went far beyond the scope of the camera. That is why we have Picasso's Femme Qui Pleure, Quinn's Blood Head and Emin's Bed, to name but a few (they're all portraits aren't they?).

What troubles me, about the Mail's headline, is that it uses photography as some kind of benchmark for reality. The people who voted for Jan Mikulka's painting are judging the artist on his ability to copy a photograph, not on his contribution to portraiture or even on his ability to capture his sitter's personality. Mikulka should be applauded for his craftmanship and his attention to detail, but beyond that, the exercise seems entirely pointless. There are however, many painters of Jan Mikulka's ilk filling exhibitions like the BP Portrait Award with their work. I admire their skill, but at the same time, I'm dismayed that they have relegated painting to the act of reproducing what the camera already does so well.

The camera, meanwhile, is so ubiquitous and moderates so many aspects of our lives, that it has become the arbiter of what constitutes our reality. We live in an age that is dominated by the flat screen (I'm typing this on one). Flat screens, littered with photographic images, provide us with our news, our information and our entertainment, so it's little wonder that the boundaries are becoming blurred. The trouble is, that the camera still doesn't do reality that well. Aside from the obvious fact that the images it produces are flat, the quality will depend entirely on your photographic paper or the resolution of your screen; camera lenses can still only focus on one thing at a time and they're still very bad at dealing with contrasting areas of light and shade (just try taking a photograph of a sunset). And if you've ever bumped into a TV celebrity in the street, weren't you a little surprised at how unlike their on-screen persona they seemed?

If photographs are really realistic, why do plant scientists find botanical illustrations more reliable than photographs when identifying specimens? And why does a urologist I know, eschew the camera and paint watercolours of the operations he performs for the edification of his students? Perhaps it all depends on what aspect of reality you're interested in. For most of us, the glossy sheen of a 6 x 4 print will do.

Picasso was once upbraided by a man for not painting realistically. When the artist asked him what he meant by 'realistic', the man reached in a pocket, produced his wallet and took out a photograph of his wife. Looking at the photograph, Picasso said, "Why is she so small?"

Bottling Your Painting Holiday - Part 1

When I began teaching on painting holidays, my preoccupation, quite naturally was with the imparting of technique. I took it as a given that our novel surroundings would be uppermost on students' minds and that the main object of a week abroad would be how to depict the trees, the mountains, the rooftops, the locals; you name it, to a foreigner, even a doorknob can look fascinating.


Painting holiday students are acquisitive creatures, as devoted to the idea of making everything subject to their paintbrush as the most avid Japanese tourist with a camera.

At Chateau L'Age Baston, even before they've unpacked their suitcases, students' eyes are alighting on the geraniums in pots by the Guardian House, the well in the courtyard, the pigeonierre with its pagoda roof, the ivy around the pantry door, the big gates to the walnut orchard and Napoleon and Picasso, the baudet donkeys. But while a serious study of any of these subjects is valuable, not a single one of them makes a picture.

The strangeness of our surroundings can put our acquisitiveness into over-drive. Everything that flits into view must be netted, put in a jam jar and logged. It's what our sketchbooks are for, after all. But I've acquired the pigeonierre ten times over and the geraniums and the well. My I-Spy collection of L'Age Baston artefacts may be complete but I'm not necessarily any nearer to creating a single work of art.

Something else happens on a painting holiday. Amateur artists who only snatch a couple of hours a week to paint (if they're lucky) find themselves with time on their hands. They sit in the garden under the walnut trees, with the morning sun upon their faces and all the ideas they thought they had evaporate like yesterday's dreams. The little sable brush they couldn't wait to pick up begins to feel as unwieldy as a tree trunk and the lunch bell dangles mutely outside the kitchen door. Time to ourselves, you see, also means time with ourselves. There are no distractions now. For the first time in years, perhaps, we are alone with our wishes, but what exactly are they? The colours glow brightly and the paper is waiting.

So these days, I place more emphasis on what motivates us and the sleight of hand, or trick of the mind, that turns a picture into a work of art.

There is, as far as I know, only one way to jump out of an aeroplane. It cannot be done by degrees. You are either trembling on the threshold, with several cubic tonnes of air rushing by you and the ground, a hazy notion at your feet or you are falling - or is it flying? And so, the artist must take a leap too. The white paper is a void as big as the sky. Choose the brightest, boldest colour in your paintbox. And just as the skydiver has no choice but to let the air carry him or her where it will, so you let the colour lead you across the paper. It may not be the shape that is in front of you, but it will be your shape. Do not be too ambitious. No need for somersaults. It's enough that you have at last, jumped.

These are examples of Day One exercises at L'Age Baston. Students were asked to choose no more than three colours and to put paint directly onto the paper without any preliminary drawing. The only other rules were 1) to ensure every colour shape related to the one next to it as well as to the boundaries of the picture itself and 2) to leave a narrow gap between different colours. This would ensure that our pictures would be as bright as possible. Unnatural and inaccurate, they may be, but we had all stopped collecting things and instead of bottling the world, we had begun to add to it.

Isn't that what being creative is all about?

The Grammar Of Drawing Part 2

From the Oxford English Dictionary, to draw also means to pull, to extract, to take in and to disembowel.

When I uploaded these drawings to a Facebook album, they provoked a flurry of responses, from downright indignation to outright enthusiasm. Perhaps they could spark so much in people's minds because they were of so little; a few random scribbles that hinted at forms and suggested narratives but ultimately refused to reveal their hidden message. There was no message, of course and those who require some kind of polemic from their art felt cheated, while others who are happy with mysteries and unanswerable questions, felt liberated.

The drawings were made by five students who attended my Grammar Of Drawing course at Dillington House (see the previous post). Standing in a circle at their easels, I asked them to draw me in long, flowing lines that filled the paper as I moved about the studio. After a few marks were made, they were required to pause, then move in an anti-clockwise direction to the next easel, where they picked up the drawing tool that had been left by the previous student and continue drawing.

My intention was to acquaint my students with the physicality of drawing. It is not like writing a cheque; something to be done with the fingers and wrists, alone, but with the whole body. If a singer can produce their voice from below the diaphragm, why can not an artist draw with his or her entire being? A singer may make us fully aware of the quality of their voice, without having to frame a single word. Is it necessary, then, for the artist to draw a pot, or a person or a pomegranate before we take any notice of the kind of mark they are making?

The first drawing tells you something about how well I can draw pots, but seems to stop right there. This is drawing, simply as a means of transferring data from one medium to another. The second drawing hints at something more elusive. We study the line in its quest to give form; we see ebb and flow and the traces of movement, at times hesitant, at others, sure. It may not tell you much about pots but it is quite eloquent about what it means to confront the void, to hold onto that charcoal and draw.