DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

2010/12/09

Forces in Black and White

Filed under: Movement Drawing: Cross Pollination Series — Tags: , , , , , — fred @ 23:21

Biomass, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Drawing with ink and brush is more like ice skating than it is like walking.  The lack of friction frees the movement to express the bliss of bodily momentum, making great looping explorations of space.  Smaller strokes can zigzag or oscillate.  If you think of the large flowing lines as low frequencies and the small vibrating ones as high frequencies, there’s a kind of musical sense of harmony and timbre going on in these ink brush drawings.

Equus, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Because of my regular practice of life drawing, all the lines I make have the curves of organic forms and the energy of living movement.

Leaping, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Sometimes Asian calligraphy shows this kind of loose, dashing, impulsive stroke.  The drawing above is inspired by looking at people dancing.  The simple brush strokes suggest figures but communicate their energy while only suggesting their form.  The drawing below uses the same simplified strokes but is drawn more slowly and composed more consciously.  Here you can make out many figures and fragments of figures.  Some of the brush strokes may belong to more than one figure.

Community, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Combining the musical abstract approach and the calligraphic figurative approach produces more ambiguous images.  I often like to keep the figurative elements of the drawing from getting too specific.  Something that can be read in more than one way is more evocative.

Leda, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Every vertebrate is a snake at its core.  Sometimes in movement we can experience a hint of that slippery freedom.

Sinuosity, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Smooth and constant motion is inertia, the same as stillness.  We experience movement only through changes in direction or through acceleration or deceleration.  As in every aspect of experience, change is fundamental.

Breast Momentum, 2010, by Fred Hatt

All of these ink drawings were made at GreenSpace in Queens, New York, during their Cross Pollination events, open sessions where the studio is made available for free improvised music, dance and art.  The drawings are infused with the energy of the music I’m hearing or the moving bodies I’m watching, or from my own movement, as I tend to alternate dancing and drawing.  The movment is too quick to allow for the kind of figure drawing I practice regularly in timed sessions with models, so these drawings usually go more abstract.

Black Sun, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The energy flows in from the music and dance, and manifests in the movement of the hand and brush.  Another factor, one that becomes increasingly dominant as the page becomes filled with marks, is an intuitive sense of composition, a feel for dynamic asymmetrical balance in the plane of the drawing, balance of light and heavy, simple and complex.

Irrigation, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The elemental forces of the world are constantly moving and changing.  We move to be a part of the process, and we draw to trace its fleeting passage in a lasting form.  Cycles within cycles, changes upon changes, make a world, a life, a body of work.

Sky God, 2010, by Fred Hatt

All of these drawings are ink on paper, 18″ x 24″.  Other drawings from the Cross Pollination sessions can be seen in these posts:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

2010/11/22

Flanking Figures

Filed under: Art History,Collections of Images — Tags: , , , , , — fred @ 17:06

Far Side of the Moon with Flanking Figures, 2010, by Fred Hatt

I made these two large reclining nudes, each one 48″ x 30″, with the idea that they would be flanking figures, a human frame for some significant object or image.  They could be on either side of a mirror or a portrait or a proscenium stage.  They could be facing center or away from center.  For me these figures have a lunar quality, so here I have used them to bracket an image of the far side of the moon.

[Tangent:  The far side of the moon was a complete mystery before the era of space flight, as the moon always turns the same face towards Earth, and of course people imagined that it hid alien civilizations or other exotic marvels.  Even now this distant hemisphere is unfamiliar to most of us.  The far side of the moon is mountainous and heavily pocked with craters, and lacks the great “seas” or mare that give the near face the dark patches that we see as the man in the moon, the rabbit, or whatever it is supposed to resemble.  The face that is turned away can be a symbol of the unseen aspect of things.  Here is an interactive map of both sides of the moon, and here’s the source for the moon map used in the illustration at the top of this post.]

Allegorical flanking figures of this sort are a fusty old iconographic tradition.  The ones I had in mind were the figures of Dawn and Dusk on the tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici, in the Medici Chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, designed and sculpted by Michelangelo.  The chapel also features a similar idealized portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici, accompanied by figures called Night and Day.  These nudes, named as embodiments of cycles of nature and shown reclining at the feet of the enthroned noblemen, exalt their central figures by portraying them as masters over Nature itself.  Those Medicis were as self-aggrandizing as Trump!

Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, c. 1530, by Michelangelo

This kind of arrangement of human images embodying abstract concepts became a standard trope in public art.  Here are the figures over the entrance to the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court in London, by sculptor F.W. Pomeroy.  In the middle is the Recording Angel, lurking under a hood and looking far more intimidating than most of the court stenographers I’ve seen.  On the left is Fortitude, with a sword, and on the right, Truth, with a mirror.

Allegorical Figures, Old Bailey Central Criminal Court, London, 1907, sculptures by F. W. Pomeroy

Allegorical flanking figures became such a cliché in the depiction of official power that they are a frequent feature of the engraved headings of stock certificates, such as this one for Shell Oil, Inc.

Shell Oil Company stock certificate engraving, 1975

The tradition probably originates with Medieval Heraldry.  A coat of arms often shows a shield with symbolic emblems or colors, held up on either side by what some cultures would call power animals, such as Great Britain’s lion and unicorn.  Here’s a lovely new variation on the theme, the official coat of arms of Nunavut, the Inuit province of Northern Canada.  The symbolic animals are the caribou and the narwhal.

Coat of Arms of the Province of Nunavut, Canada

Christian religious painting also frequently includes figures flanking a central personage.  The sidekicks may be angels, saints, or the donor who funded the artwork.  It naturally occurs in crucifixions, in which Jesus is often shown between the two crucified thieves, as in this Mantegna painting.

Crucifixion, 1459, by Andrea Mantegna

Raphael omitted the thieves, but framed Jesus between two angels, representations of the sun and moon, and one kneeling and one standing figure on each side.  Clearly the idea here is to convey the centrality of the Christ.

Crucifixion, 1503. by Raphael

I can’t tell you why I was drawn to such a thoroughly old-fashioned figurative motif.  I suppose applying my loose and energetic style to neoclassical subject matter seemed an interesting variation on improvised compositions and experimental process.  Here are some closer looks at these two drawings.  The models are Yuko and Jeremiah.  Let me know if you have anything that needs to be exalted by being displayed in between allegorical figures!

Waning Moon, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Waxing Moon, 2010, by Fred Hatt

My works shown here are aquarelle drawings on black paper, each 48″ high by 30″ wide.  All the other images were found on the web, and clicking on the images will take you to the sites where I found them.

2010/10/28

Finishing Touches

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Developed Work — Tags: , , , , — fred @ 23:55

Dreamer, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Here’s one of my recent works of a type I call chaos compositions.  These are large-scale drawings, four by five feet (122 x 152 cm) and up, made with aquarelle crayons on black paper or canvas.  These combine multiple sketches of the same model in different poses, overlapped willy-nilly without preconceived design.  I basically keep adding drawings to the same paper until it starts threatening to be an indecipherable mess, and then struggle to reveal the beauty in the wondrous complexity that results.

Part of what I’m going for here is to create images that demand of their viewers a kind of looking that is completely different from our default response to pictures.  When we look at a picture, we tend to see it all at once.  We immediately recognize its imitation or simulation of our visual experience of the world, and relate to it through the reality or fantasy that it illustrates for us.  Deeper looking may involve noticing telling details or observing how an idiosyncratic style communicates the subjectivity of the visual experience.  But it is the immediate and unified visual experience that captures our attention and imagination.

A piece of pure abstract expressionism deliberately foregoes these illusionistic charms, but still, it tends to hit us all at once.  We take it in as an overall composition of textures and colors and shapes that express something directly through their energy or their physical properties.

With these chaos compositions, the first glance is a hit of the abstract kind.  We see a busy field of colors and lines, and maybe we get a feeling of swirliness or jaggedness.  It is far too jumbled to be interpreted as a picture, though we cannot fail to see that the elements of the composition are human figures.  Some are more developed and others more sketchy, some are clear and bold while others are almost lost in the density.  Abstraction and figuration coexist here in a state of virtual tensegrity.

Most (not all) of the figures in these drawings are complete figures, but to see a figure in its entirety requires starting with its more obvious features and carefully tracing areas of color or line that may be woven in with several other figure drawings occupying the same plane.  If the viewer is sufficiently captured by the drawing to try to unravel it in this way, he or she has been drawn into a way of looking that is far more actively engaged than the receptive mode demanded by most pictures.

Kuan, a dancer/choreographer and model who recently posed for one of these chaos compositions (not shown here because not yet finished), observed that these drawings are like maps of cities.  There are different neighborhoods of varying character, all woven together by lines of movement.  You can look at the map and get a kind of overview, but the only way to really explore the city is to follow the lines, to move about within it, experiencing the distinctive pockets of a particular character and the transitional areas where multiple characters may coexist.

In previous posts on this blog, I’ve shown the progressive building-up of one of these pictures, or I’ve shown how the original figure drawings can be recovered by carefully studying the finished work.  I’ve looked at this work as it relates to my earliest creative impulses to express movement through line.  Many other examples of chaos compositions can be found in this gallery on my portfolio site, and related work can be seen in any of my posts tagged “movement drawing“.

Those posts should give you a good idea of the process behind these works.  Here, I’m going to focus on the final stage of development of three recent chaos compositions, looking at the finishing touches whereby I try to discover the composition residing in the chaos.  Here below is what “Dreamer”, the drawing shown at the top of this post, looked like at the conclusion of my session working with the model, Izaskun, before finishing work:

Dreamer, 2010, by Fred Hatt, early state

The finished version shown at the top of the post has been developed by a couple of hours of work in the studio, without the model present.  If you scroll up and back down to compare the two versions, you can see that the early state immediately above this paragraph contains virtually all of the figurative elements that are in the finished version.  You may be surprised by how little has really been added to the drawing to finish it.  But I think you’ll agree that the final version has a richness, a “snap”, and a dimensional quality that aren’t there yet in the early state.

Unfortunately, these large drawings lose a lot of their impact in such small reproductions.  (I’d love to have a show of these pieces in a gallery large enough to host a collection of them, but I don’t have anything lined up at this time.  Any gallery referrals are welcomed!)  Let’s look at a detail of “Dreamer”, in before and after versions:

Dreamer, 2010, by Fred Hatt, early state, detail

Dreamer, 2010, by Fred Hatt, final version, detail

Part of what I’ve done is simply to color in background areas to help separate the figures from the overall black field.  I’ve also paid particular attention to the faces.  I find the faces work as powerful focal points in these pieces.  The face in the upper right quadrant of this detail has had its warm tones complemented by cool tones.  The distorted face of the foreshortened figure in white, here in the upper center, has been proportionally corrected, which also allowed me to clarify the red-lined face just to the left of it.  The faces in the lower left quadrant have also been sharpened or developed.

Here’s another chaos composition, “Hero”, shown as it was just after my session with model Jeremiah, and then as finished:

Hero, 2010, by Fred Hatt, early state

Hero, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Again, let’s look at a detail view, the better to see some of the finishing touches:

Hero, 2010, by Fred Hatt, early state, detail

Hero, 2010, by Fred Hatt, final version, detail

In this segment of “Hero”, nearly all of the final development is focused on the background.  Color in the background clarifies both the figures and the overall structure while allowing the figures to remain close to their original form as raw, quick line drawings.  The standing figure near the right hand side of this detail has been filled in with yellow, and a figure just above the eyebrows of the large face on the left side of the detail has been restored from almost complete obscurity to just near obscurity, by tracing its lines in a lighter color.

Here’s our third and final example, “Sole”.  The model here is Madelyn.  First, the whole piece in two states:

Sole, 2010, by Fred Hatt, early state

Sole, 2010, by Fred Hatt

This piece started with the large feet, drawn to nearly fill the space of the drawing.  The full figures were then layered over and around the feet.  For me the soles of the feet represent the human connection to the earth, our grounding.  (A similar oversized sketch of feet, without the overlapping figures, can be seen here.)

Compared to the other two chaos compositions featured above, “Sole” has more of the feeling of a landscape.  The figures are, if anything, even more hidden, and the background elements, especially at the top and bottom, have been filled in with more detail and texture.  Here are our before and after detail views:

Sole, 2010, by Fred Hatt, early state, detail

Sole, 2010, by Fred Hatt, final version, detail

The in-between black spaces have been filled in with snaky and leafy patterns.  The arch-backed figure in the lower part of the detail has been made more dimensional by the addition of a network of cross-contour lines.  Both linear faces in the upper half of the detail have been sharpened with black and red and white lines.  The toes of both of the underlying giant feet, which had become obscured beneath the figures drawn over them, have been brought out by the addition of red outlines.

In finishing these drawings, I am cautious not to overdevelop the figures that result from my initial work direct from the live model.  I feel that the drawings made by direct observation have an energy that is rarely enhanced by further finishing, even if the figures are very rough or distorted.  The finishing work is often largely focused on the gaps between the figures.  Developing a background helps to push the figures into the foreground, giving them a feeling of depth and separating pieces that would otherwise be lost in the general tangle.

All three of the drawings featured in this post are 48″ x 60″, aquarelle crayon on paper.

2010/10/07

Nudes with Projections

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Process — Tags: , , , , , , , , — fred @ 01:20

Nox, 1996, by Fred Hatt

Some readers have expressed an interest in seeing more of my early figurative drawings, and more of my more “finished” work, so here’s a post drawn from the early years of my intensive practice of life drawing.

In 1996 I had been practicing life drawing regularly at New York’s Spring Studio for two years.  Minerva Durham, the artist and teacher who founded the studio, asked me to be the monitor (overseer, proctor, invigilator) of a regular once-a-week three hour long pose figure drawing class.  I had to show up every week at the same time, whether I felt like it or not, and take responsibility for the smooth operation of the session.  There was no pay, but I got to draw for free.

I had been developing a technique of color drawing with crayons on dark-toned paper, trying to get much of the richness of painting with the speed and spontaneity of drawing.  For me, three hours was a long time, and  my greatest challenge was to sustain the focus for such a protracted period.  (I can hear the oil painters laughing!  The egg tempera painters just sigh disdainfully.)

Creating a satisfying composition within three hours soon proved to provide plenty of diversion for my short attention span.  Of course the study of the human body and how to render its form and expression is the first task, but if you spend the whole time on that you end up with a figure floating in a void.  In reality, the body exists in an environment, with gravity and light and spatial relationships.  The actual setting of the model in the studio, though, is cluttered and distracting.

I really had no interest in placing my models into fake nature, mythological forests or imaginary harems.  A more abstract treatment of the background seemed the most promising approach.

I had been attracted to drawing more than to painting partly because I was interested in the direct expressiveness of the artist’s marks.  In a painting, these marks tend to get blended and obscured, whereas in a drawing they remain more visible.  Of course, now that I was developing my figures over several hours, striving towards an illusion of reality, as my drawings were becoming more polished, the process of the drawing was becoming more obscured.  So it struck me that I could use the background to reveal some of the process of abstract analysis that the artist goes through on the way to even the most photographic rendering.

Web, 1996, by Fred Hatt

I always figure out a pose partly by tracing angular relationships between different parts.  There’s a line from the knee to the shoulder, a line from the left nipple to the navel and another from the nipple to the notch of the collarbone, and on and on.  Every landmark of the figure has an angular relationship to every other landmark.  In the figure above the original markings that were made in constructing the figure were darkened and extended, creating a web of relationships in which the figure is suspended.

Pensée, 1997, by Fred Hatt

That approach proved fruitful.  What began as a study of internal relationships vanished from the drawing of the body as its light, shadow and color was developed, but then reappeared in the space surrounding the body.  The internal structure manifested in its spatial container.

Gem, 1997, by Fred Hatt

Sometimes the lines were more delicately indicated by their points of intersection.

Filament, 1998, by Fred Hatt

I tried to show the body itself as close as possible to what I actually saw, and to use the surrounding space to show its hidden geometry.

Throne, 1998, by Fred Hatt

At times the treatment could be more subtle, suggesting not so much hard geometrical structure, but a field of energy.

Space, 1998, by Fred Hatt

The pose below has a particularly clear simple triangular structure, so the projected lines show the sub-triangles that give it facets.

Pyramid, 1998, by Fred Hatt

The body can be projected in curves rather than straight lines.  Shadows, furniture and objects, and folds of fabric also create a linear environment in which the figure is embedded.

Rings, 1998, by Fred Hatt

Miha, 1998, by Fred Hatt

The figure below was perched symmetrically on a stool.  I didn’t bother to draw the stool, but instead traced a stack of horizontal markers that define the proportions of this pose:  ankles, knees, hipbones, breasts, shoulders, eyes and ears.

Pagoda, 1998, by Fred Hatt

The angles of the figure imply a crystalline structure that defines the person’s energetic being in geometrical terms.

Start, 1998, by Fred Hatt

Every being is an organic manifestation of a web of relationships.

Ombre, 1998, by Fred Hatt

Action is structure.

Bagua, 1998, by Fred Hatt

The engagement of a person with their environment is an organic flow, at least as complex as the internal flow that sustains the life of the individual.

Oeil, 1998, by Fred Hatt

All of these drawings are aquarelle on paper, around 18″ x 24″ or a bit bigger.  More selections of my work from this period can be seen at the portfolio I put online in 2000, as well as in several posts on this blog.

2010/09/26

End-On: Extreme Foreshortening

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Poses,Top Ten — Tags: , , , , , — fred @ 23:18

Dynamo, 2010, by Fred Hatt

My friend, model/muse and blogging mentor Claudia likes to post photos of herself to celebrate the anniversaries (first, second, third) of the launching of her great blog, Museworthy, and it has been my honor to be the chosen photographer each year so far.  This year we were seeking a new approach.  Claudia had the idea of getting in low and close with the camera, treating the body as a landscape.  She chose this sensual abstraction for this year’s anniversary post.

I love seeing the body this way.  Unusual angles create perspective effects and unfamiliar juxtapositions, and utterly transform the familiar forms of the body.  Foreshortening is a fundamental concept in drawing, designating the distortion of long shapes when seen end-on.  Often, in figure drawing, this refers only to an arm or leg that appears pointed toward the viewer of the image.  A familiar example would be the pointing finger and arm of Uncle Sam in James Montgomery Flagg’s iconic army recruiting poster of 1917.  Here I post examples of my figure drawings in which not only the extremities but the entire body is seen from a foreshortened perspective.

Looking at the body from an angle close to the central axis is very helpful in understanding it as a three dimensional form.  In these foreshortened torsos, we see the protuberances of the iliac spine of the pelvis rising to either side of the pubic bone.  The abdomen is a saddle-like shape, concave in one direction and convex in the other.  The ribcage is a converging arch.  The pectoral or breast muscles show a continuity with the deltoid muscles of the shoulder.  The upper of these drawings still shows analytical lines I drew to figure out the angular relationships of bodily landmarks.

Surveyed, 2004, by Fred Hatt

Thorax, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Looking at the body from the head end shows a succession of rounded or symmetrically swelling forms:  the top of the skull, then the cheekbones and nose, the jaw, the collarbone, the shoulders, the chest, the ribs, the abdomen and pelvis.  You can see it as a kind of architecture based on a series of differently shaped arches that you pass through or over, or as a landscape of hills and valleys that you can traverse on a meandering trail.  From this angle the legs and feet are often severely forshortened, and are best observed in relation to the cross-sectional contours of the torso.

Lounging, 2000, by Fred Hatt

Head End 2, 2006, by Fred Hatt

Head End, 2006, by Fred Hatt

I try to see organic physical forms as manifestations of patterns of energy.  In looking down the length of the body, you can see each of these levels as manifestations of the elemental forces associated with the chakras, a series of focal points arranged along the central column of the body in a Yogic conception of energy anatomy.  For example, the pelvis, corresponding to the water element, has the form of a basin, while the chest, corresponding with the air element, has the form of a bellows.  Here are a few sketches from a series exploring the energy patterns of the body in this context:

Strata, 2002, by Fred Hatt

Flat, 2002, by Fred Hatt

Zones 1, 2002, by Fred Hatt

To see the body in extreme foreshortening, I find it helpful to look at it not in terms of an understanding of structural relationships and proportions, but cross-sectionally, as a series of transverse contours receding in space.  The National Library of Medicine’s Visible Human Project, a three-dimensional atlas of human anatomy, has a website that offers animated “fly-throughs” of the human body in the various planes of sectioning.  Here’s the transverse section animation, the one most relevant to these end-on views of the human body.

Here are some more of my compositions of the body in extreme foreshortening:

Crossed Ankles, 2004, by Fred Hatt

Nuit, 1999, by Fred Hatt

The examples above are drawn from a distance of at least three meters and so show a sort of compressed perspective.  The feet and head are roughly in the same proportional scale but the angle of view has caused things to be seen in unfamiliar juxtaposition.  The drawing below is drawn from much closer, so it shows more perspectival diminution.  The feet and legs, closer to me, are large in comparison to the upper body and head, which are further away.  The length of the foot, measured on the drawing, is more than twice the width of the skull, but it looks right because it represents the perception of perspective.

Perspective, 2010, by Fred Hatt

In this foot-end view, the angles of the feet and legs are the foreground of the drawing, while the upper body becomes the mountain on the horizon.

Side Drawn Up, 2001, by Fred Hatt

Prone Reach, 2006, by Fred Hatt

Splay, 1999, by Fred Hatt

When the head is the foreground element, it remains abstract as we are looking at the top of the skull, and the face, if seen, is highly abstracted.  The body is even more landscape-like seen from the head end.

Climber, 2006, by Fred Hatt

In the drawing below, the blue line in the background is the “horizon”, or edge of the floor on which the model was lying.  The body formed a tilted rectangular form, so I tilted my drawing board to maximize usage of the page.

Tilted Horizon, 2001, by Fred Hatt

Sometimes these end-on views become visions of pure organic form.

Prone Twist, 2009, by Fred Hatt

The twisting of the body, as seen in the example above, also creates interesting sculptural forms seen from the foot end.

Corner, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Here the legs go one direction and the head the opposite, with the hand and arm reflecting that arc of movement.

Helix, 2001, by Fred Hatt

Here the position of the legs gives a soft curve to one side of the figure and a sharp angle to the other.

Bow and Arrow, 2000, by Fred Hatt

When the body is visually compressed by foreshortening, an upraised knee becomes dramatically long and vertical by contrast.

Wrist to Knee, 2008, by Fred Hatt

Angular Recline, 1998, by Fred Hatt

In the drawing below, the use of a mirror gives a view of the same pose from both the head end and the foot end.

Mira, 1996, by Fred Hatt

I’ll close this collection with a more finished piece, a foreshortened figure of graceful serenity.

Tranquility, 2008, by Fred Hatt

All the drawings in this post are aquarelle crayon on paper, in the size range of 18″ x 24″ to 20″ x 30″.  Other examples of foreshortened figures can be seen in this post and this one, and there are many others scattered through my portfolio site and other figure drawing posts on this blog.  This post features a famous 15th century foreshortened figure painting by Andrea Mantegna.

If you’re a student of drawing, you might be interested in a new series of articles on learning the basics of drawing that has begun appearing in the Opinion pages of the New York Times online edition, under the title “Line by Line” by James McMullan.

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