My friend Brian came over with an interesting snippet from an article. He doesn’t remember where he got it but it reads:
To “draw" from other artists does not mean merely to imitate. To “draw” implies everything the word stands for: to pull or to drag or to draw forth, as from the earth, a vein, or a well…………… When a figurative artist such as Balthus goes into the museum to draw from the past, he certainly is aware of the present. He embrace the tradition of painting so that he can make it uniquely his own. And in doing so, he pumps new blood into the vein, fresh water into the well; for other painters, he becomes seed, fruit, root, and soil.
My young (thirteen years) student asked for an assignment for work while she is away on a three week trip. Considering that she needs to understand drawing fundamentals before she can invent with impunity, I suggested copying drawings by such artists as Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Durer. Line for line, copy the quality of line, copy to understand the necessity of their particular lines.
It’s not an easy task. Tamar once asked me to paint a dragon on the back of a leather jacket for her. As skilled as I think I am in drawing, I didn’t, couldn’t, copy the original drawing exactly. I put my own stamp onto the proportions, my own hand into the personality of the dragon.
That was a frustrating experience. Even though my dragon was still a dragon, I learned how important coordination of observation and mark can be. It seems drawing, which is so immediate an experience, so demanding of acute attention to the art itself, is essentially a process of getting out of your own way.
Posted by leya at November 9, 2004 05:35 AM