Drawing for Dummies, or What is Art anyway?

[altivo]

This recent interesting thread in kaysho's journal made me think about how long I have been an "amateur artist" and how that came to be so. My father was semi-professional at least for part of his life, so I was exposed to drawing early and had no want of supplies or advice. By the time I was in secondary school, though, I was fairly focused on other interests and I did not have time for art classes (I could fit music or art into my schedule but not both.) In college I decided to at least consider the advantages of formal instruction, and enrolled in a basic drawing class.

It was "interesting." This is not to say that I learned nothing. I learned a great deal. The exercises assigned and the discipline required to complete them on time were very helpful indeed. But I have to say that criticism from the instructor was not very valuable other than in that it made me dig in my heels and insist that I would approach art on my own terms, not hers. The class was taught by a graduate assistant, a woman of about 30 who was finishing her MFA and in fact had a master's exhibition during the term. She dressed in men's work clothes, rode a motorcycle to class, and made few favorable comments about anyone's efforts. Innocent 'Tivo never added up the evidence until he went to see her exhibition at the campus museum. She was primarily a sculptor. Her work on display consisted almost exclusively of images of male bodies chopped into segments, or torn limb from limb, or encased up to their screaming mouths in concrete. Wow, ouch.

Remembering this for the first time in many years, I went looking for any sketchbooks or materials remaining from that class so long ago (1968) and to my surprise, found that I still had them. She gave me an A in the course, and admitted that I had a good eye and a sense of composition and presentation. But she never liked my choice of subject. Her consistent reaction to my efforts was typified by what she said of this drawing, which I have now uploaded to FurAffinity. In essence, she told me repeatedly that my work was mechanically excellent but it wasn't art because it was all "too pretty". She sent me to the museum to draw mummies and bones, which I dutifully did, and she declared them "too pretty" as well. I suppose her reaction to my imagery was much like what I feel toward Thomas Kinkade. ;P

Edit (July 26, 2005): The sudden collapse of Furaffinity broke the image link above. I have reloaded the scan here to keep it available for viewing.

Comments

[dragon-punk.livejournal.com]

I guess me and you are in the same boat right now.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hmm. How is that? Because we both took music instead of art?

Well, I didn't abandon art. I've been practicing it in many forms in the 35 years since then, to please myself and sometimes others. If you are interested in drawing then I think you should keep right on doing it as well.

[dragon-punk.livejournal.com]

I guess so. We're just both trying to learn art.

[toy-dragon.livejournal.com]

*laughs maniacally at art teacher*

*coughs*

That's a great example of why many people declare art instruction to be complete shit and worthless. Which, I feel, they get that opinion due to the attiude of many haughty, avant-gard art instructors. Art instruction can in fact be valuable, but it is relatively difficult to find a really good instructor.

Part of the problem I think is that the 'art world' and people who imagine themselves to be a part of it (which IMHO includes many teachers who see themselves as "Artistic" in the capitalized sense of the word) has always been screwy. Art is probably one of the most impossible things to truly define, which of course, means people have kicked into overdrive trying to define it, capture it, and bottle it up for their own profit (that profit not neccessarily being monentary in nature).

Still, one of the definitions that traditionally has survived, through many trends in art, is that of a piece of art performing more than illustration and basic representation. While it can quickly become arrogant in attempting to define, art is thought as containing some kind of message or theme that causes a connection with the person viewing it. A person looking at a drawing of a doe for example, might feel a basic connection with it if they like does. But the artistic question becomes "is there anything more than that? Does the doe say anything beyond 'I am a doe"?"

I suspect what your old art teacher was attempting to say and lacked the language, was that she thought your art was too perfectly representational and 'clean' in spite of good composition. Clean here, meaning free of anything aside from a pretty illustration of the subject.

This is one reason I think, why many pundits in the art world originally thought photography was the death of art because it was the ultimate 'representational' imagery, with as they saw it, nothing added to the content. But that of course turned out to be bunk, as photography proved itself to have plenty of potential for artistic expression and became its own world of art.

And like photography, it seems most anything can have artistic qualities and uses. Getting caught up in trying to define what is inherently artistic and what is not, is a fruitless exercise.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I was hoping you'd have something to say about this. :)

Your points are well-taken, though I've always had difficulty with the distinction between "Art" and "art" if you will. Decorative art has value in itself, to me. At the time of those three old works that I just put up on FA, I was very much caught up in William Morris, Art Deco, and the Pre-Raphaelites. Much of their work did indeed have communication and content, but much of it was merely decorative as well.

Another artist who has figured highly in my aspiration is Edwin Landseer, who has mostly been forgotten today I think but you may know him. (19th C. British painter who did primarily animal subjects, with great technical skill though sometimes his content is considered maudlin or hackneyed today. Being serious about animals, as I have always been, I disagree with those opinions.) Landseer gave his animals human emotions, while never representing them as anything other than normal in physical form. As we might expect, some welcomed his particular viewpoint, while others were greatly affronted by it. How could a mere animal have feelings?

As for art instruction, well, technical instruction is valuable and can be done without the values arguments. As I mentioned above, I got lots of valuable technical information from that class, in spite of the twisted values the instructor seemed to be conveying. Things like perspective and light angles can be taught, and need to be learned, whether the student will be a technical illustrator or a greeting card artist or a painter of figures that will one day grace museum walls.

Even if one intends to twist and violate perspective, as M. C. Escher did so very well, or play tricks with light or whatever, knowing how it really works is essential. Your own subtle shadings that give so much three dimensional form to your subjects is a fine example of technical skill, applied in support of a clear and vivid vision that sees what others do not. :)

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Hehe! I had similar problems with my (first-year high school) art teacher, though it has to be said I was a lazy pupil who didn't "get it" at all. Well, not lazy exactly, but... I loved drawing. I wanted to draw nice animals and she had us drawing balls with shadows on them. I was most disheartened that no matter how hard I scribbled the shadows I still never got more than a C- for it. And so I stopped trying, and art became another weekly trauma like phys ed that brought tears to my eyes. (I cried a lot at school. I think they thought I was doing it deliberately or something.)

Basically I never understood the point of any of the exercises we did. Which was nobody's fault - I was autistic, the teacher was clueless - but if only it had been explained to me in terms that made sense... indeed, if anyone had explained at all, maybe I'd have tried.

Having said that, the teacher was still evul. She put me off art for about ten years and Art-with-a-capital-A for life!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

By "Art-with-a-capital-A" I assume you mean those folks who throw blobs of paint at the wall and it automatically becomes a national treasure; or the ones who skewer rusting automobiles on giant spikes or wrap public buildings in colored canvas. I am willing to agree that stuff is art of one kind or another, but I am not willing to give it any special cachet over and above other forms or expressions.

The exercises, on the other hand, are technical. They are traditional, and are intended to give you understanding of the flow of light and shadow; how perspective and shadow give clues to the eye of a three dimensional form represented on a flat surface; how to perceive and replicate proportions. Some few people are able to simply pick up a stylus and draw without this kind of help, but many of even the greatest artists have had to struggle with it during their early years.

I am strongly in favor of "art" instruction on a technical level. I am not so sure at all about "Art" instruction, which always tends to denigrate the work of some of the finest while lauding that of some genuine hacks who just happen to be trendy at the moment.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

The exercises, on the other hand, are technical. They are traditional, and are intended to give you understanding of the flow of light and shadow;[...]

Exactly. I understand that now, a decade-and-a-bit later, but if only someone had explained this to me at the time! Like I said, though, nobody's fault; I was your typical uncommunicative Aspie, not least because I didn't actually know what knowledge I was missing.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can add anything that toy_dragon and hellmutt didn't already say well. Here's hoping the art instructor got enough course evaluations over the years to make her a little more helpful to students. Me, I'm all for "pretty"; not everything has to be for Larger Meaning--or maybe pretty is a Larger Meaning itself. Nothing wrong with representational, either; Roger Tory Peterson made a bit of a reputation out of representational art.

Thanks for sharing the art, 'Tivo. :-)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for looking at it. ;)

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's ridiculous to think prettiness isn't an end in itself. Not all art needs to be pretty, but the purpose of most (all?) art is to excite an emotional response on some level. 'Pretty' is legitimate, just like 'disturbing' can be too.

And I very much liked the doedeer too, dunno if I said so.

[cats-haven.livejournal.com]

I looked at the picture and I've come up with this thought. Your art teacher was smoking something and apparently wasn't sharing with anyone because that sketch was beautifully done. I wouldn't call it too pretty, I call it real. You captured the moment of a doe with her faun and gave just enough of a background to make them stand out more.

When it comes to drawing, I'm all for trying to make it appear real enough to believe, rather toonie or anime-ish. All the art teachers I ever had encouraged that realistic approach I took to whatever I did for the classes.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I enjoy both realistic and stylized representations, but your point is well-taken. As for the teacher, well, as I recall she used to smoke those little cigar things. Tiparillos? I've always hated tobacco so don't trust my memory.

I think it's true that she objected to "representational" drawing or painting. "Why not just use a camera?" But I disagree with that attitude. When an artist focuses on a realistic presentation, we get to see his or her way of looking at the subject. We don't all see the same things, and there is something special about seeing a familiar person or other subject through the artist's eye. I did think at one point that she wanted me to "chop up" the subject the way she did to her own work, so I handed in a grotesque drawing of another deer, with various body parts transplanted to the wrong locations on its body. She had been harping for a week on the fact that I was drawing what I saw and that she didn't want me to do that.

The poor rearranged deer did not please her. She seemed to take it as a personal affront, that I was somehow making fun of her. Perhaps subconsciously I was doing just that. Fortunately, I already had a pretty good self-concept and I liked my own work, so she did me no significant harm and I still learned things. Exercises like having to make very fast sketches of a moving model, cut off by a timer so you only had 60 seconds or whatever, were things I'd never have thought of. You do learn new stuff that way, and the class was worthwhile despite the harrassment.

It's a good thing, though, that I wasn't inclined to draw naked females. I suspect she'd really have come down on me for that.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

I think people who take that view of art are pretty sad ... as though only anger and sadness and loneliness and despair and rage and hatred can lead to "real art". Yes, emotions like that can lead to a creative outpouring, but I think in the end they're just trying to justify to themselves why they hate, are sad, are lonely, etc.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Maybe so. I've always thought it was more a sort of elitism where the individual is struggling to differentiate themselves from the rest of us by establishing some sort of "perception" that they have and we do not. ;P

(Oh, and I added a new link to the sample drawing in the original message here. Since FurAffinity has collapsed in a pile of bickering furry drama, the first upload is no longer accessible.)