A more serious training..

I am getting more serious about my drawing skills training / learning in past few weeks.
Although I did not do very well in my watercolor courses in January (and I do accept I did not put enough time on it), it bought me close to my near and dear skill.. drawing..
After re-reading my books, on figure drawing, I am getting more attracted towards the classical way of studying drawing. My current aim is to first do very well in drawing, before moving to the next medium. It is kind of encouraging to learn that even in classical ateliers, students spend more than an year first in drawing. So its not a bad idea to focus on it till I master the medium very well.
One of the most important thing to learn is that even the professional masters spend a lot of time in a single drawing. Breaking it up into smaller 2/3 hour chunks and working on it for weeks.
The idea is to work on details, and redo the parts till they are perfect (ie. use the eraser without a guilt feeling :-) ). I did try this and my first study has been a good success. The main thing I learnt is that if I spend more time and focus on details, like drapery and hair, they turn into pretty interesting things and add a lot to the overall impression of drawing. The hair and clothes look pretty boring when I try to complete the whole sketch in 1/2 hours.
So here is the result of my first study.. A cast drawing of a sculpture by Rodin. I plan to do many such casts..

The separate ways of traditional art and 3D computer graphics

Another recent post of mine on goodart

Hello,
Having some amount of interest in both art and computer graphics, I find it surprising that the two fields follow quite separate paths even though they have a lot in common. Computer Graphics theory is seen to be almost rediscovering a lot of concepts and learnings that were already discovered by the great masters. On the other hand I feel, the classical atelier type of study could benefit from using 3d modeling applications as "tools" to assist learning the form and affect of light on it as it provides a faster way to move around both 3d objects and lights in different ways to see different combinations of light and shade.

Part of the difference lies in the fact that computer graphics community is made up of two very separate roles for individuals. The application developers, who are well trained in 3d solid/surface concepts as well as the light theory, and the 3d artists, who are well trained in using the applications to produce stills and animations. Whereas in traditional art, both these roles are combined into a single person, the painter.

Here is a long list of observations. They are all separate bullet points that I am unable to put together in a good way :
1. Painting is considered art while graphics is considered science. Although I believe both are somewhere in the middle.
2. The basic principles of light are introduced in more approximate and practical ways in art books (in order to shade by hand), while they are taught as a collection of separate physical formulas (that can be written as mathematical equations). Although these separate ways are good for task at hand, I feel each of these books could borrow from each other. New art books could have a page devoted to three types of light effects (ambient, diffuse and specular), while the graphics books could devote a page on how the three effects would look in a combined and way, like the classical sphere made up of highlight/midtones/shadow/reflected light and cast shadow.
3. In recent years, there is a lot of discussion in computer graphics community about a "newly" discovered concept called subsurface scattering that would make the rendering of skin and marble more realistic !!
I believe this concept of light scattering below the surface was well known to great masters as can be observed in their renditions of skin and marble in paintings. If only the graphics scientists would have read a bit about these and the methods used to render these effects they could have benefited a lot earlier. (I think it is produced by painting a lot of thin layers of paint one above another, that can in a way 'trap' the light and scatter it),
4. I feel the online communities and discussions go totally separate ways in both the communities. When I visit the graphics communities I see, that the artists trying to learn anatomy are searching for information, and happy with some cheap books/dvds that are not accurate or well drawn.
There are many such instances, which I could crystallize to put in words.. I will keep adding them as I become more aware...

Finally, let me confess that while I am interested in both, I am more affectionate towards painting than graphics. I consider that as of today, the organic forms (portraits/figures/landscapes) produced by hand are much more accurate and also pleasing to eye than the ones produced using graphics applications. :-)
Yet I do feel that some use of graphics applications as tools for learning (I am not talking about producing art on computer) could help in reducing the learning time for the concepts that are learned by observation alone.

I would like to give some pointers for some freely available (open-source) graphics programs that I found quite interesting.
1. Blender is a modeling software. I warn that it has a steep learning curve, but I believe it won't be that much of a problem for trying out a composition of basic shapes and lighting.
2. Makehuman is a program for modeling 3d humanoid characters. I warn that the quality of models produced is far below the standards found in classical paintings. However, this is the best way of producing some forms and posing them the way you want quickly. While this cannot replace live models, it does give us an easy way of trying different poses quickly. It could serve as preliminary homework, before actual live model sessions, and probably an easy way to decide on a new pose that we expect from the model.
3. Inkscape is a 2D drawing program. The advantage I see here is the ability to 'modify' the lines in our line drawing !!. We normally draw lines and erase and draw new ones, if we are not satisfied with curvature. However, if we have the ability to modify the curvature *interactively*, it could serve as a good tool for learning the aspects of line shapes and curvatures.

Differential skills & quality depending on medium & subject.

One of my recent post on goodart discussion group

I find that I have a vast difference between the quality of art produced
depending on the medium I use and the subjects that I draw. Has anybody
observed this ? Is this common among artists ?
1. I am good at portraits & figures, but bad at landscapes
2. I am good with pencils & pastels, but bad with watercolors
3. I am good drawing complex surfaces of a single object
(portraits/figures), but am not so good at
drawing a composition of simple objects (eg. a sketch of a living room)
4. I find myself to be better at drawing figures in watercolor than
drawing landscapes with the same medium.
5. I find that drawing comes very naturally to me without any training
(except for reading a lot of books), but I
can't paint well in watercolors in spite of a lot of training.

I have following questions.
1. Have you observed this quite often among fellow artists, yourselves
or your students ?
2. I want to start doing portraits/figures in oil, but I am in mixed
minds. Are oils more close to pastels, or watercolor in terms of
execution ? On one hand, I am afraid I won't do well as I haven't been
good with watercolors, but on the other hand I feel, it might be ok,
since it is possible to do lot of corrections and layers with oil.

Note that I am an amateur, doing portraits as a hobby. So probably I
haven't put enough time in the other mediums as required.

On Painting and Poetry

I was thinking about the parallels between painting and poetry and it struck me that drawing and painting skills are much like the ability to write. The main content of the painting is in its composition, the visual elements laid out in visual language. This is the reason why probably the xerox machines and type writers did not affect poetry much like the way photography affected painting.
Major portion of the drawing and painting skills includes the basic skills, but this part in poetry is almost covered by age of 5. People learn to write letters and words by then, and then the next upgrade is when a person learns to use those words to compose a set of lines that also rhyme.
It should also be noted that in case of painting, the basic drawing skills are very important, whereas in poetry it really doesn't matter whether the poet's handwriting is good, or he/she may even do-away with writing and use a keyboard instead.
A good classical painting requires, the natural/real forms to be composed in a poetic manner, much like poetry requires using a good set of rhyming words. When the poetry does away with rhyming or uses a lot of liberty and stretches words to fit, or makes meaningless sentences, it turns into an equivalent of abstract painting. An abstract painting is like using garbled, invented and nonsense words to create a poem which doesn't even rhyme.
Anyways, the bottom line is, however difficult the initial drawing skills are, it is only when an artist learns them and makes a leap towards the composition, that he/she will be unaffected by photography. Because composition in painting, like composing a poem is something that the new technology (photography, computers) is not able to do very well on its own.