Why Draw from Life?

domi_digital asks: "I need to get something cleared up. What is the biggest reason that pro artists tell me to draw from life? My opinion is, it's to get a sense for 3d space, and therefore placement of objects in that space. I've drawn from life before, but as a beginner it was really overwhelming. I drew still objects, but I can't even imagine how hard it is to draw a moving subject."

Answer: Yes, you're right. Translating 3D space to a 2D piece of paper is a cognitive skill that you develop while drawing from life. Does that skill make you better at creating a sense of solid 3D form or a feeling of depth when you draw from your imagination? I don't know, but I suspect it does. 

Also, as you suggest, when you draw a moving object, you develop your speed of execution. You'll be able to paint a picture in a fraction of the time it would take you in the studio. 

But drawing from life is more than a method of developing your skills. It builds your visual vocabulary. It puts you in direct contact with visual effects that cameras can't see. 

There's no filter. There's nothing between you and the subject: no lens, no film, no sensor, no distortion, no picture frame, no style guide, no color picker, no caption, and best of all, no words. As long as you're looking at photos or other people's art, you remain in the cave looking at shadows on the wall. 

Drawing by A. Menzel, 1902 
Profile study of a man with
sketching block and pencils

Drawings done from life by artists from centuries ago somehow transcend the stylistic mould of their times. 

Finally, it's a powerful experience on its own terms that makes you feel more alive and connected. When you draw or paint from life, you become very aware that everything is moving and changing: the sunlight moves, flowers fade, and the tide comes in. It's always a good thing to get in touch with the dynamic universe.

Wisdom of Austin Briggs

The new issue of Illustration Magazine (#68) takes an insightful look at American illustrator Austin Briggs (1908-1973).  

One thing that makes this issue special is that it quotes extensively from Briggs's rare master course that he made for the Famous Artists Course, so we get wisdom from the artist himself. Here are a few excerpts:

PERSISTENCE

"When a painting is going well, I am conscious only of the fact that I am having a wonderful time. When it is going badly—and very often it is—I am miserable until I find out what is wrong. This may take minutes, hours, or even days. But by hanging on and never giving up, I finally get something close to what I want."

IMITATION AND ORIGINALITY

"I cannot imagine anything more frustrating than the life of an imitator. When the vogue for the originator is over, or when the originator stops painting, the imitator is finished, too. Imitation is the blindest of all blind alleys, and the most destructive habit a beginning artist can possibly get into. I know. I can speak from experience, because when I was an immature artist I imitated like mad. Eventually I discovered that this kind of thing doesn't pay in the end. The only way to paint is to go to life and reality for material, and to express the excitement and emotion you feel as directly as you can in your own way."   

ADVERTISING ILLUSTRATION

"Every element in the advertising illustration must be slanted to appeal to the particular audience or 'market' the client is trying to reach. The picture must tell its story directly, so that the page-flipper gets its message in one quick glance. Above all, the painting must create a positive emotional response which leads directly to an enthusiastic acceptance of the product."

STYLE

"If I have a style, it is not a deliberate, conscious attempt to exploit a group of popular clichés. It is rather an unconscious projection of my personality into paint. Style is never created out of whole cloth. Style is the natural and inevitable reflection of my personality. Style is the direct expression of what you are. It is as intimate a matter as your manner of speech, the way you walk, the way you sign your name. Everyone inevitably has a style of his own—if he tries honestly to express what he feels, without trying to imitate someone else. Therefore forget about the question of style. Instead, concentrate on becoming a person. Learn to react—to feel, to love, to want, to dislike—and style will take care of itself." 

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Illustration Magazine: Austin Briggs, Issue #68

Austin Briggs: The Consummate Illustrator

Famous Artists Course and Masters of American Illustration.

Previous posts on GurneyJourney about Austin Briggs

Images of 19th-Century Evictions

With bans on evictions expiring in many states, the sad truth is that a great many renters will be forced out of their lodgings. Let's see how artists portrayed evictions in centuries past.

 

Blandford Fletcher, "Evicted" (1887)

William Teulon Blandford Fletcher (British, 1858-1936) focuses on the powerlessness of the widowed mother. The child clutches an umbrella, as rain will surely come, and she drags a toy horse that has fallen on its side. Villagers look on sympathetically.

"The Sale of Old Dobbin" by John Robertson Reid (1851-1926), 123 x 187cm.

According to BBC: "This picture tells the story of an event that happened in 1874 when a farmer worker, William Bromley, was evicted from his farm at Yalding in Kent and forced to sell off all his belongings, including his faithful old horse Dobbin. William Bromley is seated front left and the young girl next to him, weeping quietly in a handkerchief, is his eldest daughter Emma, who was ten at the time. A few months later the family emigrated to New Zealand." 

Art historians believed this was a fictional image until a descendant saw the painting in a museum and recognized his great-great grandfather and his story.

Erik Henningsen (Danish, 1855-1930) painted “Foreclosure” in 1892. The plight of the family is heightened by the snowy weather. The father is powerless to negotiate with the constable, who reads from the law book. 

There are many photographs of Irish evictions, as many families were forcibly removed from their farms in the decades after the Famine; this one is in County Kerry. See photos and stories of the Irish resistance and the practices of British landlords at this blog post.

In 1844, Adolph Menzel documented a pile of household contents from someone moving out of a cellar. Chairs are stacked at right and a woman sits on the pile at left. I'm not sure if they were evicted or just moving, but the stuff seems piled hastily. 

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Read and see more online:

Post-Famine Eviction Photographs (Ireland)

Polenov's Drawing Evenings

Vasily Polenov (Russian, 1844-1927) hosted artistic gatherings at his home where his friends could assemble to draw costumed figures.

Konstantin Korovin. Artists at a “Drawing Evening” at Vasily Polenov’s

Fortunately a few of these "drawing evenings" were documented in quick sketches. The model is visible dressed as a soldier.

For the session below, the model was dressed in a desert costume, probably acquired by Polenov on a trip to Egypt and the Near East when he was researching Biblical paintings. 

Yelena Polenova. Artists at a “Drawing Evening”
at Vasily Polenov’s Home. 1889

The sketch is by Vasily Polenov's sister Yelena Polenova, an artist who became well known for her illustrations of fairy tales. 

 

Here is one of her paintings, called "The Beast."

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Polenov's Teaching Circle: Tretyakov Gallery online publications

Hans Gude in Britain

Norwegian landscape painter Hans Gude (1825-1903) wanted his work to be better represented in the British art market, so he went to to England, Scotland, and Wales to paint there. 

Hans Gude, Scotland, 1889

He noticed a different approach to plein-air work among British painters. 

Hans Gude, Fresh Breeze off the Norwegian Coast

Among Scandinavian painters in the 1850s, most artists made plein-air paintings on location and then brought the studies back to the studio, where they used them as reference for their larger studio works. 

He noted the practice was different in England, where artists would often paint finished works on location. He wrote: "My English stay was of great benefit to me in that I freed myself from many of the prevailing studio maxims by being alone and in a landscape so new to me that it forced me to observe more keenly."

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Hans Gude on Wikipedia

Catacomb Saints

A relic from the Holy Catacombs of Pancratius.

Historical Museum St. Gallen in Wil, Switzerland

Catacomb saints were the bodies of early Christians exhumed from the catacombs of Rome and sent to Catholic churches in Germany and other northern European countries. The skeletons were often lavishly decorated with gold costumes to simulate early martyrs. These figures were created to replace statues and other decorations that had been destroyed during the Beeldenstorm of the 16th and 17th century.

When to use an underpainting

Paul Lekang  asked on YouTube: "You often, but not always, start by giving the painting an "undercoating." How do you decide IF you should do it ... and how do you decide the color? Does the color shine through in the end - even though you've painted over it (several times?)"

Solar flare underpainting in casein

Paul, you're right, I don't use those undercoatings all the time. I prime a few pages in advance without knowing what painting I may do over them. I use a thin layer of casein or Acryla Gouache, both of which dry with a matte surface that won't reactivate. I use gouache or casein over them, and those opaque colors to shift the color into other realms. 

The priming layer influences all the choices I subsequently make, and that's why I like it. The color of an underpainting inevitably does shine through. Sometimes the underpainting color is similar to the colors I end up using for the finish. 

Other times I use a contrasting set of colors for the final paint. For example, it's exciting when a blue underpainting peeks through an orange painting, or when you glimpse a red underpainting beneath green foliage. 

Interview with Steve and Marty

Here's an interview with a the YouTubers Mary and Steve (Mind of Watercolor). (Link to YouTube) 

Mel Brooks Meets Abstract Art

in this 1963 short, comedian Mel Brooks is the voice of a skeptical character looking at abstract moving shapes in a crowded theater. (Link to YouTube)

Botanical Garden Interview

The NYBG posted an interview about painting outside in the gardens. Here are some of the questions and answers:

NYBG En Plein Air (Photo by Ben Hider)

Helena La-Porte Burns asks: "What makes plein-air painting so special?"

JG: I like interpreting the world around me with no filter. It’s just me and my little book and my handful of pigments trying to make intelligible the whirling chaos of reality. As artists it’s hard not to fall back on conventional approaches, but sketching from life helps me discard my expectations about what an “artistic” subject ought to look like.

I try to find something beautiful in a subject that most of us overlook, such as a supermarket doorway or a jet airplane parked at the airport. This inclination sometimes makes me feel ill at ease in places with such obvious beauty and lushness as a garden, because the tradition is so strong, and the standards have been set so high by garden painters such as George Elgood or Mildred Butler.

Cleome, casein on canvas mounted to panel, 11 x 14

Do you have a favorite flower to paint, and why?

JG: One year in the Garden I fell in love with a small group of cleomes, or spider flowers. They were tucked away in the Family Garden. I used an old-fashioned paint called casein, which was popular before acrylic was developed. I was fascinated by the shape contrast between the oval petals and the long, filament-like stamens. I love the way the leaves get smaller and yellower as you go up the stem. You don’t see paintings of cleomes as often as other flowers, but to me they just call out to be painted, because they make such a beautiful silhouette, and they seem so delicate.

HLB: Which NYBG collection is your favorite to capture?

JG: I know roses are the popular favorite, and they’re my favorite, too. There’s so much richness of form and color from an artist’s perspective. And of course on a warm summer day the scent is heavenly, the people are friendly, and there’s a painting just begging to be captured anywhere you look. In the included video I’m painting the variety called “Carefree Beauty.” I’m close enough to see the structure of individual flowers and leaves, but far enough away to allow the individual flowers to group into masses.

What amazes me with roses on a warm day is how much the blossoms change from the morning to the late afternoon. If your painting shows the particular shape of specific blossoms, they will change drastically by the time the session is over, and if you return the next day hoping to find the same arrangement, it won’t be there. Seeing plants in the dimension of slow time is a huge revelation.

HLB: What does the NYBG Plein-Air Invitational mean to you?

JG: When I think of each of the years we’ve done it, I recall the feeling of camaraderie and common purpose shared by a group of friends, each of us trying to carve a slice of the magic that is NYBG. After weeks of anticipation we head out to our chosen spot on a golf cart. As we paint, it’s a chance to meet members of NYBG’s loyal public, many of whom have artistic inclinations of their own. At the end of a busy day of painting, we gather to munch on treats, sip wine, share our tales of triumph and disaster, and check out what each of us created.

HLB: Which seasonal collection do you look forward to painting in the future?

JG: I want to get back to painting the lilacs again. The aroma is heavenly, the variety of colors and types are incredible, and I appreciate being allowed to set up our easels on the grass around them. While studying the lilac flowers, it’s fun to watch the bees busy at their work. I love the way the flowers start out as bulbous buds, each with a tiny “X” at the tip, and the way they open into four-petaled flowers, starting at the base of the spike.

 

(Link to video) HLB: What is the most challenging aspect of the art?
JG: I’m always fascinated and challenged by the way petals of hollyhock, roses, and peonies can focus and intensify color in the center of the blossom. Nobody described the artistic effect better than Gertrude Jekyll:

“Some of the colour is transmitted through the half-transparency of the petal’s structure, some is reflected from the neighbouring folds; the light striking back and forth with infinitely beautiful trick and playful variation, so that some inner regions of the heart of a rosy flower, obeying the mysterious agencies of sunlight, texture and local colour, may tell upon the eye as pure scarlet; while the wide outer petal, in itself generally rather lighter in colour, with its slightly waved surface and gently frilled edge, plays the game of give and take with light and tint in quite other, but always delightful, ways.”

HLB: As a longtime plein-air artist, have you noticed any significant changes in the environment that affect your work? Do you have any examples?

JG: I live in the mid-Hudson Valley, and I’ve noticed the effects of invasive plants such as Japanese stiltgrass in the understory, and I’ve certainly noticed the effects of the big die-off of pine forests when painting mountain landscapes in Colorado. During this recent lockdown period, I’ve noticed some encouraging signs of nature bouncing back, with far more native wildflowers, such as trillium, in our local forest. I don’t know why they haven’t been browsed by the deer, but I appreciate seeing them again.

HLB: What tips do you have for budding plein-air artists?

JG: I would suggest that young artists who want to paint from life should always keep a sketchbook for pencil sketches and quick color studies. Building up a practice of regular sketching excursions with friends is a great way to get started. There are Urban Sketchers groups and plein-air meetups in almost every city. Every once in a while I think it’s important to slow down and spend more than one session on a work of plein-air, perhaps at least three or four hours on one study. And you don’t have to do it in a busy, public location if you’re nervous about people watching or judging you.

Look for non-touristy places where artists rarely go, and where no one would expect to find someone painting. You’ll have it all to yourself and you’ll really be able to concentrate.

HLB: Is there anything else you would like to share with us and the readers at this time?

JG: I’m grateful to the NYBG for its sponsorship, both of botanical illustration and plein-air art. While both may result in attractive images of flowers, the botanical artist is more concerned with portraying individual flowers with a scientist’s perspective, removing a plant from its context to understand form and function while still seeing the beauty in it. The plein-air artist pays attention to the whole living ensemble as influenced by light, air, atmosphere, spatial depth, and that intangible element of life and change. A goal of mine is to combine the two perspectives, to see both the forest and the trees.
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Watch my video "Flower Painting in the Wild,"available as a DVD from Amazon and as an HD download from Gumroad and Sellfy.   

Also sample my Gumroad tutorial: "Casein Painting in the Wild." 

Musicians in the garden were members of the Dolce Ensemble.                                                             

More from NYBG about plant talk and backyard botany