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riding the rail#1
30 sec glance and draw sketches |
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riding the rail#2
30 sec glance and draw sketches |
Although I was trained to draw from the model/life from most of my significant influences, I believe it can become possible to become so dependant on having the example before you at all times that it makes it difficult to work out of your head. Many of the "dusty artist authors" as I lovingly call my old books (70-100+ years since publication) on art technique will rant about only working from life but then will touch base on the importance of implanting that which you have practiced intently. One author claimed to have put students through extensive studies to prove that when given a mastercopy they had never seen before, they could study it visually, have it removed from sight then replicate this drawing quite precisely. It went on to say that Rodin practiced this methodology to the point that he could watch a person move around him, isolate a few moments of that positioning and make work from his memories of these fleeting moments.
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riding the rail#3
30 sec glance and draw sketches |
I'm no Rodin, but I have questioned some of the memory drawing methods and have considered, "What am I taking away from the hours I spend with the model? Could I replicate what I have studied 20 hours a week?" So in my off time of commuting through Manhattan I always took my sketchbook and passed the time with an exercise of looking and committing to memory what I could. When the bus stopped, I would look up, find an object, scene or person and study it as a drawing for the minute while the bus either picked up passengers or was at a stop light. When the vehicle was in motion I would put the head down and regurgitate all the visual info I could recall onto paper. In this example I was riding the Long Island Railroad to see a friend in Long Beach where the stops, via the automated doors, are a strict timed similar to that of the subways (amount of time the subway doors stay open is between 12.059 seconds and 21.149 seconds even though MTA's claim that the subway door stay open for an average of 30 seconds as presented data from a MTA rep.) If nothing else, I concluded that the memory drawing (like the fast sketch) is a good way to train the brain to take in a scene through a more visual filter to accommodate the artist's eye.
