DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

2011/07/26

Freudian Analysis

Filed under: Homage: Visual Artists,Top Ten — Tags: , , , , , , , — fred @ 19:55

Double Portrait, 1986, by Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud, who just died on July 20, 2011, devoted his long career to painting figures and portraits from life, perfectly ignoring all the art-world trends of his era.

Bella, 1987, by Lucian Freud

Many of his images are of people and/or animals sleeping.  He always painted directly from live models, often friends or family members rather than professionals, and he worked very slowly, so the sleeping poses may be an accommodation to the models.  I am struck, though, by the sense of struggle and intensity in these works.  Freud’s paint has the writhing quality of Goya’s horrors or El Greco’s spiritual transports, but in pictures of people simply relaxing on beds and sofas.  I think the sense of agitation arises from Freud’s own restless struggle to see more deeply and to capture in paint the intensity of his own visual experience.  For Freud, every canvas was a wrestling match against a powerful foe.

Pregnant Girl, 1961, by Lucian Freud

The fleshiness of his painting can be a distraction.  I got a better understanding of  the energy of Freud’s searching eye by looking at his etchings, where the quality of movement stands out.  Most portraitists view their sitters across a distance.  Freud’s perceptual focus hikes over his subjects like a surveyor mapping a territory.  He treats the figure as a landscape, to be explored by touch and movement.

Head and Shoulders, 1982, etching by Lucian Freud

Freud loved animals, and he often shows his own dogs posing with his models.  He told William Feaver, who wrote a book about Freud’s work, “I’m really interested in people as animals.  Part of my liking to work from them naked is for that reason.  Because I can see more, and it’s also very exciting to see the forms repeating through the body and often the head as well.  I like people to look as natural and as physically at ease as animals, as Pluto my whippet.”

Sunny Morning - Eight Legs, 1997, by Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud was the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the progenitor of psychoanalysis.  Sigmund Freud spent hundreds of hours with his subjects lying on a couch, trying to penetrate the hidden recesses of the mind through dreams and free association.  Lucian Freud also spent hundreds of hours with his subjects lying on a couch, but he kept an intense focus on the surface.  I think he felt that the physical body, truly seen, could reveal hidden depths.  Surely Lucian Freud’s work reveals depths, although, as with Sigmund’s work, it could be argued that those depths belong to Freud more than they do to his subjects.

David Hockney; Lucian Freud, 2003, photo by David Dawson

Freud said, “My work is purely autobiographical… It is about myself and my surroundings. I work from people that interest me and that I care about, in rooms that I know.”  Given the necessity of spending a great deal of time with his sitters, he wouldn’t work with anyone unless he genuinely liked that person.  Still, he absolutely avoided any sentimentality or idealization.  Freud’s subjects had to accept that he would portray their every flaw, that he would reveal their mortality.

David Hockney, 2003, by Lucian Freud

While Freud, as far as I know, never worked from photographs, some of his models were photographed while posing for his paintings, which gives us an excellent way of seeing where he exaggerates and what he emphasizes.

Sue Tilley posing for Lucian Freud, 1995, photo by Bruce Bernard

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, by Lucian Freud

The painting above is one of Freud’s best-known works, having set a record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist when it was sold at Christie’s in 2008 for 33.6 million dollars.  Notice how much older the model appears in the painting than in the photograph.  He seems to have made her more obese and more splotchy.

Many figurative painters do the opposite, omitting bruises and calluses and visible veins, subtly idealizing the body.  And many people are repelled by Freud’s figures, with their sexuality and mortality so blatantly on display.  Speaking for myself, this is the very aspect of Freud’s work that gives it spiritual power.  It is the essence of the human condition that we are spiritual beings manifested in animal bodies that experience fear and desire, suffering and decay.  I see this as the quality of art that Federico Garcia Lorca calls duende, the life force intensified by the closeness of death.

Naked Man with Rat, 1977, by Lucian Freud

Freud’s earlier work, such as the portrait below of Lady Caroline Blackwood, lacks the blotchy impasto of his later work, but there is already a kind of magical realism, with enlarged eyes and expressive distortions.

Girl in Bed, 1952, by Lucian Freud

Freud said, “The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.”  You can see this principle not only in the individual works, but across the artist’s entire oeuvre.  The later work is unquestionably more abstract, the strokes wilder and freer, but they also have a living presence that is much stronger than in the earlier work.

Four Figures, 1991, etching by Lucian Freud

 

The Painter's Mother III, 1972, painting by Lucian Freud, and The Painter's Mother, 1982, etching by Lucian Freud

The face below is surely distorted, yet you can see the intensity of the artist’s perception in every thick stroke.  There is a kind of aura, a powerful presence that cannot be achieved by working from photographs and fretting over accuracy.

Esther, 1982, by Lucian Freud

 

Lucian Freud and model, 2004, photo by David Dawson

Freud said, “Perhaps when you have the sort of temperament that is always looking for flaws and trouble it might stop you from having what you always want, which is to be as audacious as possible. One has to find the courage to keep on trying not to paint in a stale or predictable way.”

Night Portrait, 1978, by Lucian Freud

I’ll conclude this post with two of my favorite Freud nudes.  Night Portrait, above, finds beauty in a pose that seems to be both resting and running, and in the textural contrast between the body and the quilt.  Naked Man, Back View, one of Freud’s many paintings of the model Leigh Bowery, also well known as a performance artist and costume designer, suggests an interior life through the turned-away display of a mountainous back.

Naked Man, Back View, 1992, by Lucian Freud

All the images in this post were found on the web.  Clicking on the pictures links to the pages where I found them.  The Lucian Freud quotes were also found on the web.  All the quote sites seem to have a similar collection of Freud quotes, unfortunately not sourced.

2011/04/21

Public Sculpture

Filed under: Public Art,Sculpture — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — fred @ 19:10

The Rocket Thrower, 1963, sculpture by Donald De Lue, Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, NY, photo 2004 by Fred Hatt

The wide variety of reactions I heard following my recent post on Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates got me thinking about public art, which can be highly controversial, but which also becomes such a part of the everyday environment that people stop noticing it, like that bum that’s always on that certain corner every time you pass by.  The Gates was only up for a few weeks, but most public sculpture stands for decades or even centuries.  It is much more widely seen than any other kind of traditional visual artwork, but most of the artists are not well known. In preparing this post I researched the pictured sculptures so I could provide names and dates for them.  In many cases it was easy to find pictures of these sculptures, but surprisingly difficult to find information about the artists, dates, etc.  If you live in or have spent much time in New York, you’ll surely recognize many of these pieces, but I’ll bet you didn’t know the names of the artists, and if you look at the captions here you will see that most of them are not exactly famous names in art history.  Public sculpture is ubiquitous but anonymous.

In this post we’ll take a look at a wide variety of public sculptures in New York City.  I took most of these photos, but not all of them.  The ones I didn’t take link back to where I found them on the web.

The lead picture above, with its incredible leaping energy, is in the Flushing Meadows Park location of the 1939 and 1964 Worlds Fairs.  This sculpture has the Art Deco style of the 1930’s, but it was actually made for the ’64 fair, and its title, “The Rocket Thrower”, makes it a monument of the space age.

Here’s another allegorical naked man in Queens:

Triumph of Civic Virtue, 1922, sculpture by Frederick MacMonnies and the Piccirilli brothers, Queens Borough Hall, Queens, NY, photographer unknown

Queens congressman Anthony Weiner has recently created a lot of publicity for the old statue “Triumph of Civic Virtue“, calling it sexist and offensive, and suggesting it should be sold on Craigslist.  This piece was originally installed in City Hall Park in Manhattan, but it was always controversial, as it presents an allegorical male figure of virtue standing victorious over two female siren or mermaid figures representing vice and corruption.  New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia finally “exiled” the statue to Queens in 1941, and there it has continued to be ignored or objected to to this day.

I wonder why we haven’t heard such controversy about another old-fashioned monument, the equestrian portrait of Teddy Roosevelt that stands in front of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.  This statue shows Roosevelt on a horse, leading an Indian and a Negro who flank him on foot.  I’m not sure what this sculpture is trying to say, but it seems to embody a kind of paternalist colonialism that we’re no longer comfortable with, and this piece is in a much more prominent location than “Civic Virtue”.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1940, sculpture by James Earle Fraser, American Museum of Natural History, NYC, photographer unknown

“Tilted Arc“, one of Richard Serra’s curved and leaning steel walls, was installed in Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan for eight years.  People who worked in the area hated having to navigate around this 12-foot high, 120-foot long barrier, and it was eventually cut into pieces and removed, against Serra’s objections.  I’ll side with the workers on this one.  Serra’s space-bending works are quite popular when people can experience them in an appropriate location, but there is something oppressive about imposing such a wall on people who have no choice in the matter.

Tilted Arc, 1981, sculpture by Richard Serra, Federal Plaza, NYC, photographer unknown

Of course, most public sculpture doesn’t arouse such animosity that it has to be chopped up and junked or put up for sale on Craigslist.  Most commissioned memorial sculpture looks dated and stodgy as soon as it goes up, but it does add an element of human liveliness to the built environment.  Plus, it’s very popular with the pigeons.

Figures from the Maine Memorial, 1913, sculpture by Attilio Piccirilli, Central Park, NYC, "Pigeon God", 2002 photo by Fred Hatt

There must be hundreds of traditional bronze figurative monuments in the city, 19th century depictions of the Great Men of the era.  The craftsmanship is classical but the style is stiff and generic.  Sometimes an unusual point of view can make one of these into a fascinating abstraction.

Abraham Lincoln, 1870, sculpture by Henry Kirke Brown, Union Square, NYC, "Bronze Cloak", 2003 photo by Fred Hatt

There are stores that sell cast sculptures for private gardens, reflecting the common taste rather than the institutional preferences of public monuments.  In the display below, I’m struck by the similarity between the busts of Elvis and David on the right, as well as the middle finger and “kiss my ass” sculptures in the front row.

Statuary Store Street Display, 2003, photo by Fred Hatt

Many public sculptures are war memorials.  Such monuments exhibit an interesting range of styles.  There’s the “realistic” depiction of the band of brothers-in-arms:

107th Infantry Memorial, 1927, sculpture by Karl Illava, Central Park, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

The gothic romance of the young soldier embraced by the angel of death:

Prospect Park War Memorial, 1921, sculpture by Augustus Lukeman, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY, 2003 photo by Fred Hatt

And this depiction of the soldier as void.  This reminds me of the traditional symbol of the “released spirit” in Jainism.

The Universal Soldier, Battery Park Korean War Veterans Memorial, 1987, sculpture by Mac Adams, Battery Park, NYC, 2006 photo by Fred Hatt

Gandhi is a different kind of warrior, a figure that is both a spiritual and a political icon.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1986, sculpture by Kantilal B. Patel, Union Square, NYC, 2006 photo by Fred Hatt

Some sculptures salute the power of love, like these kissing cherubs, not a public monument but a type of decorative sculpture that adorns many homes in my neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Eroded Cherubs, 2009, photo by Fred Hatt

A youthful and willowy Romeo and Juliet gaze into each other’s eyes outside the Central Park theater that hosts free Shakespeare in the Park every summer.

Romeo and Juliet, 1977, sculpture by Milton Hebald, Delacorte Theater, Central Park, NYC, 2005 photo by Fred Hatt

And these full body casts by George Segal commemorate the gay civil rights movement just outside the Stonewall Inn, where a 1969 riot sparked a rebellion of the oppressed.

Gay Liberation, 1980, sculpture by George Segal, Christopher Square Park, NYC, photographer unknown

Many sculptures use figures to depict the spirits of Nature, and the human connection with Nature, like this boy dancing with goats.

Lehman Gates, 1961, sculpture by Paul Manship, Central Park Zoo, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

Or the irrepressible nature spirit Pan.

The Great God Pan, 1899, sculpture by George Grey Barnard, Columbia University Campus, NYC, 2007 photo by Fred Hatt

Or the trickster imp Robin Goodfellow, or Puck, best known as a character in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.  This Puck shows us ourselves in a mirror.

Puck, 1885, sculpture by Henry Baerer, on the Puck Building, NYC, 2005 photo by Fred Hatt

Of course the supreme god in Manhattan is The Almighty Dollar.  One of Manhattan’s Subway stations features many little bronze figures and scenes by Tom Otterness commenting upon both rich and poor in the money-driven society.  These figures embody a cartoon aesthetic in the traditional monumental medium of cast bronze.  Many people rub this moneybag head for luck as they pass by on their way to transfer trains.

Figure from "Life Underground", 2000, sculpture by Tom Otterness, 14th Street and Eighth Avenue Subway Station, NYC, 2004 photo by Fred Hatt

Mr. Moneybags isn’t the only sculpture people touch like a sacred relic.  The atrium of the very upscale shopping mall at the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle is dominated by two gigantic rotund bronze nudes, “Adam” and “Eve”, by Botero.  So many tourists are compelled to touch Adam’s penis that it shines in a golden color, while the rest of the figure is dark bronze.

Eve, c. 2003, sculpture by Fernando Botero, Time Warner Center, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

This magnificent pagan goddess, Cybele, was a powerful presence in Manhattan’s Soho district for over a decade, but she’s gone now.  This depiction is a modern variation on the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus.

Cybele, 1993, sculpture by Mihail Chemiakin, Prince Street, NYC, 2006 photo by Fred Hatt

These natural spirits can be embodied in a more abstract mode.  Alexander Calder applied his unique sense of organic form to the modern medium of riveted steel sculpture.  Look how beautifully the angles of the Calder “Saurien” are reflected in the angles of the buildings across the street from it, particularly the faceted glass LVMH building, second from the right in the top photo below. ( The LVMH building was constructed a quarter century after the sculpture was installed.)

Saurien, 1975, sculpture by Alexander Calder, Madison Avenue and 57th Street, NYC, 2004 photo by Fred Hatt

Saurien, 1975, sculpture by Alexander Calder, Madison Avenue and 57th Street, NYC, 2005 photo by Fred Hatt

About a block away from the Calder, another abstract modernist work portraying an embodiment of life force is Joan Miró’s “Moonbird”.  (If you look closely on the left of this picture, it appears that Pam Grier is heading for a meeting with Walt Whitman.)

Moonbird, 1966, sculpture by Joan Miró, 58th Street, NYC, 2009 photo by Fred Hatt

“Alamo”, better known as the Astor Place Cube, has long been popular despite its dry formalism because it rotates on its base if you give it a good firm push.

Alamo, 1967, sculpture by Tony Rosenthal, Astor Place, NYC, 2009 photo by Fred Hatt

I’ll conclude with what I consider one of the ugliest public sculptures in New York, though this picture flatters it a bit.  This one has a chunk of boulder, a replica of the hand from the equestrian George Washington statue across the street from it, bricks with gold leaf ringing an aperture that puffs out steam, and, unseen in this picture, a deliberately unreadable enormous digital clock display that is supposed to express “the impossibility of knowing time”.  This piece is the ultimate example of the hazards of art that is concept-driven and committee-chosen.  The artists’ website on this piece describes the significance of the elements of the piece, but understanding it doesn’t really improve it.

Metronome, 1999, sculpture by Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel, Union Square, NYC, 2010 photo by Fred Hatt

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the subject of public art here, even restricting myself to a single city and to work that can be considered sculpture.  In case of a future follow-up post, I’d include Greg Wyatt’s “Peace Fountain” near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Eric Fischl’s Arthur Ashe memorial, Alice in Wonderland in Central Park, Gertrude Stein in Bryant Park, the Statue of Liberty, the Wall Street Bull, and . . . well, please send me your suggestions!

2011/04/11

Academic Figure Studies

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Practice — Tags: , , , , , , — fred @ 15:03

Ali, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The term “figure study” seems calculated to evoke pedagogical sobriety absent any whiff of lasciviousness.  Even the word “figure” suggests cogitation rather than concupiscence.  Representational artists have long found contemplation and analysis of the human body to be both an invaluable skill-building practice and a source of inspiration, but in the imagination of the general public all artists are roués and their models are not simply “undraped” but downright nekkid.

Those who are actually familiar with the practice drawing from life know that a room full of artists focused on the model is often suffused with a meditative intensity more like the atmosphere of a monastery than that of a brothel.  For fifteen years I have served as the monitor (supervisor) of a three-hour weekly class at New York’s Spring Studio.  We do a set of quick poses to get the energy flowing for both model and artists, and then a single long pose for the rest of the session.  Minus the breaks, we have about two solid hours to study and draw a single pose.

I’ve featured many drawings from those sessions in various posts on this blog.  Sometimes I work on the portrait, other times I concern myself with the subtleties of color and light or the complexities of foreshortening.  In this post I’ll feature drawings from the Spring Studio long pose sessions that come as close as I ever come to the ideals of traditional academic figure drawing practice.

Betty, 2009, by Fred Hatt

The academic approach to figure drawing generally demands that the entire figure be scaled to fit the page.  Artists may use a variety of measuring aids, such as a plumb line or a viewing grid, and use special techniques to establish accurate relationships, often spending more time in measuring and mapping than they do in actually drawing.  Some artists who work this way attend the long pose classes at spring studio.  They usually use graphite sharpened to a needle-fine point and work very carefully.  They’ve often been schooled in the techniques taught by Charles Bargue and Jean-Léon Gérôme, where students start their studies drawing from plaster casts of classical sculpture before graduating to the live figure.  Some of Bargue’s own drawings are particularly beautiful, and many other artists use these techniques to wonderful effect, although the danger always seems to be that the live model comes out in the drawings looking like a plaster cast.

Marilyn, 2009, by Fred Hatt

If you’re familiar with my work, you’ll know that this traditional academic method is quite far from my way of working.  For me it would be painfully slow and timid.  I do some measuring when I’m drawing, but more for checking and correcting rather than initial construction.  As a self-taught artist, I prefer to work as quickly,  spontaneously, and boldly as possible.  It’s certainly not the appropriate way for everyone to draw, but for me it’s how I get the feeling of aliveness into the work.

James, 2010, by Fred Hatt

So these aren’t really “academic figure studies” at all.  They are, however, drawings in which I have striven to depict, as accurately as I can, the reality of the model on the posing stand.  This includes the individual characteristics of the models and the way their bodies rest on or around the various boxes and bits of furniture and fabric that make up the completely artificial environment in which they are placed for our observation.

Emma & Maria, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Two models posing together lets us see the body in relation to another body, with all its differences and similarities.  The models for the drawing above were a mother and daughter.

Jeremiah, 2010, by Fred Hatt

It is rare in the open drawing long pose sessions that we get to study the back.  The back is just as complex as the front of the torso, but its defining points are much more subtle and therefore more challenging to draw.

Claudia, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The drawing above is of Claudia, the great model-blogger behind Museworthy.

Elizabeth, 2010, by Fred Hatt

For the drawing above, I was sitting on one side of the model’s platform in Spring Studio’s horseshoe-shaped arrangement.  I’ve included a very rough representation of the other artists on the opposite side of the room.

Jiri, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Standing poses are often considered the simplest and most basic poses for drawing, because they generally lack foreshortening and tricky juxtapositions.  I find them challenging, though, first because the tall and narrow standing body doesn’t fit well within the moderate rectangle of the drawing paper.  I find it hard to make myself draw so small, and I have a tendency to make the head too big because it’s hard to get the needed detail in such a small area.

Jennie, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Seated and reclining poses come more naturally to me, but every pose presents its own special challenges.

Maria, 2011, by Fred Hatt

The boxes and fabrics and objects around the model become part of the composition, but they also create a set of geometrical relationships that can help the artist to analyze the scene and establish proportions.

Yisroel, 2011, by Fred Hatt

For me, the reason to understand the anatomical structure of the body is not to be able to alter the figure to more closely resemble an ideal, but to better appreciate the range of variations on every part of the form that makes each figure unique.

Jun, 2011, by Fred Hatt

On most of the drawings featured in this post I’ve remained fairly faithful to the actual background objects on the model’s platform, though I’ve often simplified them and altered the colors to please my own sense of composition and color harmony.

Kuan, 2011, by Fred Hatt

I’ll close with another dual-model pose.  These men are not related as were the mother and daughter seen in the other two-model drawing here, but they had a great rapport.  Both of them look like they belong in the 19th century!  The younger model is the same James seen in the fourth image in this post.

James & Tram, 2011, by Fred Hatt

All of these drawings are 18″ x 24″ or close to that size, aquarelle crayon on paper.  All were drawn at Spring Studio’s Monday morning long pose sessions.

2011/02/11

Rough Likeness

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Portraits,Studying Perception — Tags: , , , , , — fred @ 21:37

Chuck, 2009, by Fred Hatt

There’s an old saying that all artists paint themselves.  Take a look at these examples compiled by art historian Simon Abrahams, different artists’ portraits of Napoleon, paired with the same artists’ self-portraits, to get a sense of how literally this statement may be taken.  In a broader sense, of course, the artist depicts her or his own perception, energy, and way of relating to the world and other people.  The portrait is perhaps the most relational, the most other-directed of all the traditional forms of pictorial art.  The most wonderful portraitists, from Diego Velasquez to Alice Neel, seem to feel their sitters so deeply that the subject’s personality shines through the work even despite the artist’s very distinctive style.

The whole point of the portrait, after all, is to capture a likeness.  Of course, a snapshot can get a pretty good likeness.  The interesting thing about a portrait drawn or painted by hand, directly from life, is in how it records the way an artist looks at another person, the interplay between how the sitter presents himself or herself, and how the artist experiences that through the focus of artistic representation.

In this post I share some of my portrait drawings for what they reveal about how I see and draw.  Here I have selected only relatively rough sketches, mostly 20-minute pieces.  The rough sketch shows the feeling out of the form, the attempt to understand the distinctive features that will give the drawing a likeness to the subject.  In a more finished work the initial analysis is obscured under layers of refining, so here we’ll look only at quick sketches for what they show best.  All of these are drawn directly from life, with no photographs, preliminary sketches, or optical aids.  All of these are from open life drawing sessions, not from commissioned sittings.  I find I draw more freely in these sessions, where there is no requirement to succeed.

Here’s a famous illustration from Alfred L. Yarbus’ study, Eye Movements and Vision:

Saccadic eye movements looking at a face, from Yarbus, "Eye Movements and Vision" (1967)

Human visual perception is quite different from photography.  A camera records a whole field of light levels simultaneously.  The human eye has only a very indistinct perception of the wide field.  We see by constantly scanning the scene, and the full picture is assembled in the brain, not in the eye.  A fuller explanation can be found in this post.

Yarbus used eye-tracking equipment to analyze how people scanned objects, their perception dancing from one salient detail to another.  The tracing of the eye movements in the above illustration is, in itself, a very rough portrait.  This is essentially what the process of observational drawing is:  every glance of the eyes is a moment of perception, recorded by the artist’s hand rather than Yarbus’ eye-tracking system.  Most artists combine this direct perceptual recording with various analytical techniques.

Michael R, 2010, by Fred Hatt

The fundamental particles of perception in drawing are contours and light/dark variation.  For me, the trick of faithfully converting visual perceptions to marks on the paper is to experience the sensations of the eye as tactile sensations.  All the human senses are extensions of the sense of touch, complex organs evolved to focus particular aspects of the environment to be felt by specialized nerves and interpreted by specialized areas of the brain.  I think my extensive experience in body painting helped me to train my brain to this task.  I am used to feeling the body through the soft touch of a brush stroking over its surface.  When I look at the light falling upon the body or face, I imagine that the light is stroking the skin, being gently applied by an invisible brush.  My hands are familiar with the feeling of this brush, and naturally reproduce the movements of this imaginary brush of light.

Alexa, 2010, by Fred Hatt

I usually prefer to draw on a gray or mid-toned paper.  I use a light crayon, white or any color lighter than the ground, as I follow the undulations of light over the three-dimensional surface of the face.  In the same way that I think of the light crayon as a brush, I sometimes imagine the black or dark crayon (or pencil, or marker) as a chisel working on a sculpture, carving the deeper shadows, the hard edges and crisp contours.  On gray paper, I focus alternately on the highlights and the dark places, and let the paper provide the more passive in-between values.

Michael H, 2011, by Fred Hatt

I try to stay always engaged in a tactile way, moving with force and feeling as though I am engaged in massage or sculpture.  I almost never allow myself to lapse into imagining the drawing as a flat surface.

Bob, 2007, by Fred Hatt

The particular contours of an individual’s features convey the singular essence that the viewer experiences as likeness to the person.  In the sketch above, note the free-flowing quality of the light lines, and the very different quality of the dark lines as they clearly delineate the shapes of such salient features as eyebrows, lips and jawline.

Adam, 2011, by Fred Hatt

Adam, the face above, is utterly different from Bob, the previous one. Adam had a wiry intensity, and that energy affected the quality of all my lines.  If the light lines in the Bob drawing meandered like a delta stream, those in this Adam drawing are quick and jagged, like strokes of lightning.  The eyes are surely larger than proper proportionality would dictate, but it works with the energy and does not destroy the likeness.

Robyn, 2010, by Fred Hatt

On this one, Robyn, the mouth is too big.  Caricaturists have long understood that if you get the shapes of the features right, proportions can be way off and the likeness still holds.  [Check out the fantastic celebrity caricatures of my friend, Dan Springer, to see this principle masterfully applied.]  If I’m doing a longer portrait, I’ll try to correct the proportions as I go along, but I don’t worry about it at first.  The likeness will be better if the drawing captures the sitter’s energy, and for that, the drawing must be spontaneous.

Shizu, 2010, by Fred Hatt

After I’ve brushed in the lights and chiseled in the darks, sometimes I use mid-value colors to analyze the structure, to figure out angular relationships or to unify forms that remain vague even after the light and dark have been separated.

Izaskun, 2009, by Fred Hatt

When the drawing conveys both the quality of energy that the sitter expresses, and the particular shapes of individual features, it will seem to have likeness to its subject.

Taylor, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Each of these drawings was done in approximately twenty minutes.  All of them are drawn with aquarelle crayons on paper.  All are 18″ x 24″ (45.7 x 61 cm) or a little bigger.

2011/01/12

Mixing in the Eye

Filed under: Art History,Color,Studying Perception,Top Ten — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — fred @ 19:21

Alley, 2009, by Fred Hatt

Most contemporary technologies of color image reproduction use optical mixing to obtain a full range of colors.  Four-color process printing, CRT, LCD and plasma displays, all reproduce a wide gamut of hues and values using tiny dots of ink or luminous pixels in just three or four colors.  The colors remain discrete in the image, and are only blended in the eye.  The illustration below shows a detail of a printed color picture, with inks of cyan, magenta, yellow and black in dots of variable size.  A color monitor performs a similar trick with glowing red, green and blue dots of variable brightness.

Image printed in four-color process, with detail showing halftone dots

The old masters who developed the craft of pictorial oil painting did not, as far as I know, ever consciously use the phenomenon of optical color mixing.  Most of them used some variation of the technique of grisaille, or painting in black and white (or sometimes in greens or earth tones), then adding color by applying thin transparent glazes over this monochrome foundation.  Jan Van Eyck is often considered the first master of this technique, and it’s still commonly used by painters who follow the classical methods.  Here are two versions of a painting by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, the first version in grisaille, and the second with color glazes applied.

Odalisque in Grisaille, 1824-34, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Grande Odalisque, 1814, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

The great virtue of this method is to achieve a feeling of solidity and luminosity.  The grisaille painting allows for a sculptural rendition of values, and the white of the grisaille reflects all wavelengths of light, which are then subtly filtered by the glazes.  Light penetrates the transparent surface layer of the painting and reflects back to us from a deeper level, tinged as the setting sun or the distant mountain are tinged by the intervening atmosphere.

Directly mixing pigments on the palette or on the canvas, on the other hand, tends to give dull and flat colors.  Every opaque blend of two pigments has less brightness and less intensity of color than either of its components.  The natural mineral pigments available to painters before the industrial revolution were extremely limited, so the glazing technique was often the only way to achieve color that was both vivid and subtle in its gradations.

In the nineteenth century, several technological innovations led to a completely new approach to color in painting.  Photography quickly surpassed the painters in its ability to render monochromatic values.  This made painters strive to reproduce the more vibrant effects of color that photography still could not capture.  Modern industrial chemistry discovered new synthetic pigments that were both permanent and far more vivid than the classical artists’ pigments.  All those paints with chemical sounding names like alizarin and phthalocyanine are products of the new chemistry.  Pre-mixed paints in squeezable metal tubes were yet another nineteenth century development that made it much easier for an artist to leave the studio and study the colors of nature and the effects of light outdoors, or en plein air.

French Impressionism was the product of all these changes.  The old methods started to seem stodgy and lacking in spontaneity, and in any case were unsuited to plein air painting.  You can observe optical color mixing effects starting from the beginnings of the impressionist movement, as in this Renoir painting.

Bal au Moulin de la Galette, 1876, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

In the detail below, you can see that the clothing and shadows on the ground are painted with various bright colors in close proximity, colors that do not correspond with the actual surface colors of the objects being depicted.  The overall impression of the colors in the painting is vibrant but not unnatural.

Bal au Moulin de la Galette, 1876, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, detail

Monet painted haystacks in a field and the facade of Rouen Cathedral over and over again, trying to capture the ever-changing subtleties of light and air.  [Both links in the preceding sentence are well worth a click!]  Here the haystack contains dabs of red, olive, lavender, violet and black.

Grainstack (Sunset), 1890-91, by Claude Monet

Artists such as Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt used optical mixes of odd colors like greens and purples to depict flesh tones.

Lydia Leaning on her Arms, Seated in a Loge, 1879, by Mary Cassatt

George Seurat studied the science of color perception, and developed an analytical approach to painting with optically mixing colors.  He called his method chromoluminarism, though it’s better known today as pointillism, a word originally coined by critics.  Here’s one of his mural-scale canvases, followed by a detail of a face in profile, showing the discrete dots of color.

La Parade du Cirque (Invitation to the Sideshow), 1889, by George Seurat

La Parade du Cirque (Invitation to the Sideshow), 1889, by George Seurat, detail

What Seurat does with analytical coolness, Vincent van Gogh does with fiery intensity.

Sower with Setting Sun, 1888, by Vincent van Gogh

Optical mixing of colors also interested abstract expressionists such as Joan Mitchell.

Weeds, 1976, by Joan Mitchell

Chuck Close is the heir to Seurat’s analytical approach, as in this monumental self-portrait.

Self Portrait, 1997, by Chuck Close

Self Portrait, 1997, by Chuck Close, detail

For my own work in color, I usually use aquarelle crayons on toothy charcoal paper.  The crayons deposit bits of pigmented wax on the ridges of the paper.  Going over an area with more than one color leaves the markings separate, and the colors mix optically.  Here’s a detail of the portrait of Alley featured at the top of this post.  You can see that the flesh tones are made up of strokes of blue gray, pink, yellow, light blue, reddish brown and white, on a neutral gray paper.  The technique is particularly effective at depicting reflected light in shadow areas.

Alley, 2009, by Fred Hatt, detail

Here’s a quicker figure sketch, followed by an enlarged detail.  Here the colors making up the flesh tones include turquoise, orange, fuschia, and yellow.

Maira Horizontal, 2010, by Fred Hatt

Maira Horizontal, 2010, by Fred Hatt, detail

Mixing colors in the eye, rather than on the palette, produces color impressions that are bright and shimmery, that suggest not only the effects of light but the slippery nature of flesh tones.  The actual colors of living human skin are subtle to the point of elusiveness.  Skin is translucent, imbued with underlying colors of blood and fat.  Its surface is nearly iridescent, and reflects and refracts the colors of surrounding objects and lights.  Flat colors cannot capture this subtlety.  Grisaille and glazing can, and so can optical mixing, in a very different way.

All the images in this post, besides those of my own work, were found on the web.  Clicking on the pictures will take you to their source pages, and in many cases, to larger versions of the images.

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