Figure Drawings Over The Past Three Decades

I've been slacking here on these posts lately but not on my website. Recently I have looked into my archives for thousands of life drawings over the decades. Most of them are gesture drawings completed in about 10 to 15 minutes. All these were done in charcoal.

Go and have a peek at the web page I've created last week. You will find it here.

Being gesture drawings they are very rough but these can be quite dynamic with line and movement.

If anyone would like to do life drawing there is a wonderful group in Boulder, Colorado where they meet up three times a week. The sessions range from 5 minutes to half an hour with the mid week session is one long pose - mainly for painters.

There is also the Student League in Denver with weekly sessions. If you really want to be proficient at figure drawing, there is not shortcut but to go to one of these groups.

How To Sketch For Fun and Profit

Here is an article written by Mz Sock from the Philippines. She would like to share her views on How To Sketch For Profit. She has suggested to give comments on this article to help her climb the ladder of success in the literary world.

How to Sketch for Fun or Profit
What does the word Sketching bring to mind? A good way to kill time? Something to do when you're bored, right? All of these things? Yeah, probably. Sketching is a waste of time and energy! It gets you nowhere! That is a huge misconception. People tend to think of artists as homeless men and women, spending day in and day out by the street, making a living off of selling their paintings. Life, basically, sucks. Not in this day and age it doesn't! If you're an artist, someone who's interested in the arts, or just a really bored person doodling every class period away, you'd be glad and relieved to learn that you can not only sketch for fun but also for profit!

Sketching As A Hobby
Let us begin by exploring how you can sketch for fun. Sketching is very enjoyable (duh), whether you are a seasoned painter or someone who merely doodles every now and then in class. Sketching can be very therapeutic as it can act as a distraction. It also helps with something experts call “flow,” which is basically an almost meditative state that a person gets into when he or she is absorbed in doing a particular thing, such as sketching. Besides that, sketching also provides you with a hobby. When you have a hobby, you will feel like you have a more balanced lifestyle, you feel like you have a purpose in life. All of these are very relaxing, which is why sketching is fun.

Sketching For Law Enforcement
We will now discuss another benefit of sketching – profit. Contrary to popular belief, the fine arts do not doom you to a future of selling your paintings by the street. There are many opportunities at careers that require skilled sketchers. Firstly, there is the sketch artist. “Sketch artist?! Don't those only exist on TV?!” I hear you exclaim. No, they're real jobs for real people. If you are an avid fan of crime shows like CSI or Bones, you should definitely give this field further thought. As a sketch artist, you can either be in the police squad or the forensics unit. The police squad would require you to draw sketches of faces as described by victims. The forensics unit would usually require you to sketch with a computer software to reconstruct a crime scene.

Sketching For Entertainment
Next, we will look at another career field that an artist can go into. It is an obvious albeit interesting choice – a cartoonist! What does a cartoonist actually do? Well, have you ever flicked through the pages of a newspaper just to get to the comics section? The job of a cartoonist is to create content for that section. Of course, you don't have to limit yourself to newspapers; you can branch off into different media like comic books, magazines, or you can even do freelance work.
Society has always been appreciative of the fine arts, way back into the days of the Renaissance, the time when naked sculptures and paintings sprung up all over Europe. The problem lies in the way that the fine arts is interpreted, that you will only end up as a painter, a sculptor, or something along those lines. Times have changed, though, and sketching can now be used not only for fun and entertainment but also for legitimate business and career prospects. So, don't throw away all those smiley faces and hearts you drew in Math class; turn them into a portfolio!

Are Your Drawings Expressive Enough?

There are many drawings on show in some of the top museums in the country, many of them are expressionless and boring. Few of the old master's drawings are in this category.

So how can we make our drawings more expressive with an emotional message?

There are many ways of course--from the quality of your lines, thick or thin, light or dark or even the length can have an impact on the overall statement. The subject matter does make a difference, if it is the same old stuff regurgitated you are not going to create much impact.

Great drawings have to have a cohesion between the form being drawn to how it is being drawn. That also implies the quality of line you have used to express the emotions.

A jerky line can be expressionless whereas a bold line has character...there's no doubt a timid line can be expressive against a bold line to give the latter more strength.

The Passing of One of India's Great Artists

Maqbool Fida Husain better known as MF Husain, was one of the great artists in the world. There are more than 60,000 paintings to his credit. He was born in a traditional Muslim family in British India in 1915.

During his childhood itself he had a passion for art and his father was very supportive. In 1935, Husain joined J.J.School of Arts in Mumbai. Before being recognized in the late 1940s, he had a tough time in Mumbai when he struggled financially. His first painting exhibition was held at Bombay Art Society in the year 1947.

Many successful exhibitions were held in Europe as well as America. He also tried his luck in the film industry. It was an honor for him that his first film Through the eyes of a painter earned the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Some of his paintings in which he depicted nude portraits of Hindu gods and goddesses brought up many controversies. Later in 2004, some Muslim organizations were against him as he used certain words from the Holy Quran in one of his films.

Again there arose objections against him as he painted Mother India as a nude woman. He apologized and went to live in exile to Dubai. After some years he got Qatar citizenship. He was honored with much recognition in India and his paintings were sold out for huge amounts. On June 9, 2011 he passed away at the Royal Brompton hospital in London.

Vishu Shaktar
June 2011

For Drawing Pencil Sketches

Indian Film-Making Hero: An Art Form We'll Not Forget

Sathyagit Ray was a wonderful film maker of India. He had a great passion for film making where he brought real life stories into the movie business.

He was interested in artistic films rather than the commercial junk. His departure was quite a loss to the Indian film industry.

Influenced not only by film but affected by a humanitarian attitude of this wonderful art-form. Simplicity was the trademark of this hero but not only in India. His worldwide acceptance was mainly due to his humanistic approach to real life in India.

Ray made his films in Bengali which is a language spoken in west Bengal on the eastern state of India. In 1992 he achieved honorary academy award for lifetime achievements.

Ray's films are both cinematic and literary at the same time--it is sad to remember that today he is no longer with us but his films are still alive which is an asset to the nation.

Ray's film has a rare blend of intellect and emotion. His first film was Pather Panchali which established his reputation as a major film director by winning numerous awards. Ray directly controlled many aspects of film making. He wrote all screenplays many of which were based on his stories.

In addition to film making Ray was a composer, a writer and a graphic designer who wrote short stories, articles and novels in Bengali, also he made a significant contribution to children's literature in this language.

His stories were unpretentious and entertaining. The subjects include adventure, detective stories, fantasies, fiction and even horror movies.

Aditaya Drupada
Bengal

Painter of Light

 
One of my favorite contemporary artists is American Thomas Kinkade. Known as the “Painter of Light”, he is famous for serene but colorful light-filled scenes of beauty that seen more idealistic than real. Quaint cottages in the sunset, stormy seas crashing against lighthouses, pastel-tinted bridges over lilypad-covered water, these are all images that Kinkade imbues with his own way of highlighting with an ever-persistent glow. His paintings are viewed as inspirational, and he has spoken publicly about how his Christian beliefs impact his art.

Thomas Kinkade strikes a chord with the public so that he is also one of the more lucrative and well-known painters of modern day. He is one of America’s most collected artists. While his original paintings may be out of the price range of the average person, it is easy to find a likeness of a Kinkade painting on note-cards, mugs, ornaments, mousepads, and screensavers, to name a few. Prints of his paintings are popular, and even puzzles of his paintings have been known to be put together and framed as art.

Kinkade is a prolific painter of simple scenes of everyday life. His continues to evoke emotion and inspire people around the world with his unique, illuminated style.

Abraham Rosen

Drawing Pencil Sketches Blog: Egon Schiele: THE Master of Drawing and Sketching

Go here for images of Egon Schiele: http://tinyurl.com/3uvqcrx

Egon Schiele: THE Master of Drawing and Sketching

He did mention that he had taken his art to "its fullest possible development" just prior to his death in October 1918, almost at the end of WW1.

He did make an outstanding contribution to self-expressionism in modern art, raising the bar far in excess of his peers (Gustav Klimpt is one) to achieve exemplary works of art.

Most of his drawings which I've seen personally in Amsterdam, are charged with energy not seen before in the world of art. It has all of Egon's emotions and feelings with his drawings becoming almost volatile.

No other artist in modern history has come close to his vitality.

He did base some of his paintings from photographs if you compare a painting of Adele Harms taken by Schiele with a photo he took earlier. This painting is mildly erotic which could explain a sexual tension between the artist and Adele!

Go here for images of Egon Schiele: http://tinyurl.com/3uvqcrx

Abstract Drawings Will Take You Beyond Realism

Powerful drawings of abstractions conjure strong emotional feeling if the viewer can relate to it. If the viewer can perceive the artists viewpoint, they can then be transported to other dimensions beyond 3D and/or above the 2D paper surface.

If one walks in the exhibition room with a closed viewpoint, this does not give the mind enough freedom to discover other elements the artist intended.

You do not have to be savvy in the art world to appreciate fine abstract drawings—only your perception of the lineal forms and the related tone values. Often the artist does point you in certain directions—but don't look at the finger, look towards the direction he is pointing—or what is beyond the drawing; this is very much like a koan.

If there is an essential feature in the artwork you recognize and can relate it to realism, you will be able to "feel" what is behind the abstractions.

There is no good definition of abstract drawing or abstract art and if there was something created with pure abstractions we would not be able to perceive it at all.

Any abstract drawing or painting, good or bad, must be able to communicate something to the viewer—even a bad drawing can invoke nausea.

Conversations About Figure Drawing and Painting

Have you ever overheard conversations between people in a gallery presentation?

"Well, I don't think there will be a return to figure drawing in the foreseeable future. I mean, look at those figurative paintings plagiarized almost from the Fauves!"

One of the things creeping in from the younger generation are about the attacks on the so-called "know-it-all gallery owners" who denounce the student's mimicking the old master's.

But, take note, that today the young artist's have embraced abstraction with more passion than their peers.

Figure drawing is here to stay and will always be part of an artists' bag of forms to inspire his and others' creativity.