The Core of Art
More and more nowadays an unfortunate reality in the art world is the fact that freehand representational drawing seems to be seen as a bit of a poor relation compared to other styles and mediums. Clear indications of this are the difference in prize money offered in competitive art shows, in fact less and less art shows all the time even offer a drawing category. There are a relatively small number of competitive art exhibitions that actually concentrate on drawing rather than painting but they seem to mostly favour non-representational styles.
Fed Through the Baffling Machine
Even more apparent (to me anyway) is the ever increasing prevalence across the board of that mystifying word “contemporary” which is added to all kinds of art, art shows, and gallery names. By definition the word means modern or the current style/latest thing but when connected to art almost invariably translates into “abstract” or even “altogether indecipherable”. I’m not for a second claiming that it’s not art or even that it’s not good art. I learnt long ago that art is whatever is created by the artistic urge and appreciated (or not) by all the other humans. I have to admit though that a lot of what is offered up as original fine art these days utterly baffles me no matter how open minded an outlook I adopt. It’s probably because I favour a representational style coupled with the fact that I’ve never harboured the slightest pretension of understanding what drives the other humans to do most of the things they do or say, let alone the arcane subject of artistic creation. Something
I personally believe in wholeheartedly though is that no matter what medium, style, or genre cooks your particular creative curry, freehand drawing skills are absolutely imperative if you really want to cut a track through pretty much any creative compulsion. Everything from calligraphy, illuminated script, printmaking, all the painting disciplines, woodcarving and sculpture, and even things like tattoo design, graphic novels, anime, and cartooning all benefit exponentially from the hand skills, proportional judgement, and instinctual aesthetic sensibilities acquired from developing a good freehand drawing skill base. It never fails to amaze me how undervalued and almost ignored this most basic of the artistic disciplines has become (more and more it seems) as time goes by. Back in the day (lots and lots and lots of days ago) it was by all accounts de rigueur for anyone even contemplating having any kind of serious bash at any of the fine art disciplines to have excellent, or at the very least competent freehand drawing skills before any lids came off paint tubes or anyone would even dream of identifying themselves or being recognised as “an artist”.
Not the case anymore it seems in these highly distracted, social media obsessed, time poor, selfietaking, instant gratificationalised, corporatised, dumbed down, copyof-a-copy, digitally enhanced times we find ourselves in. I’ve had a lot of students in my drawing workshops that are either doing or have done certificate courses, diplomas, and even degrees in the visual arts that without exception tell me the same thing, they are repeatedly told that basic freehand drawing expertise is not seen as something that is necessary or even desirable if you’re aim is to be an artist. How far we’ve come. I just can’t comprehend how anyone could create anything without sketching and drawing skills. As I’ve stated many times though there’s a lot I don’t understand about a lot of things but seeing how essential being able to draw freehand as an artist isn’t one of them. I reckon it’s worth going through a few of the more common mediums to explore the necessity thereof;
Drawing
My favourite medium above all others is graphite which can be manipulated and made to do almost anything you
want with practise, patience, and a clean rubber (fig 1). Most other drawing mediums are not quite as forgiving though. Charcoal is workable to a degree with a kneadable rubber but coloured pencils are bonded with wax rather than kaolin and so are mostly a lot more difficult to remove once laid down. Some colours are easier than others to push around, either on the blank paper or on top of one another. Some of the drawing mediums are quite irremovable; felt tip pen, pen and ink, etc. The value of a sound ability to confidently draw lines and curves where you want them in the first place is even more obvious when you only get one go at it.
Painting
In some ways painting is just drawing with a brush as far as the actual act of laying down marks and shapes on the actual canvas goes. Being able to proficiently judge the shapes and form of things you are painting won’t do you much good if you can’t translate that into deft movement at the bristle end of the brush. Paint like oil and acrylic can be pushed around and layered, shifted, covered over again and again, etc which gives you a lot of room to move as you work, on the other hand traditional watercolour painting (without using opaque white) is very unforgiving as what you lay down is pretty much what you get (fig 2). Painting a dead tree branch across a sky is the perfect example (a dark branch on a light sky anyway, a light branch on a darker sky would be masked with latex but you still have to paint the latex on with a confident hand), you can have a few attempts at some parts of a watercolour it if you keep spraying it with water and wiping it with a rag but it’s easy to make a mess and the odds of that rise the more you poke at it. A good level of confidence and drawing skill is required to get the paint where you really want it. There’s always an element of the intangible with any watercolour work but your ability to address the paper with the brush shouldn’t be one of them.
Pastel
I know pastels are traditionally regarded as painting but I have always put them in the drawing category. There’s no bristles, paint, colour mixing, or medium involved, just big lumps of colour that you ‘draw’ with. Semantics aside, there’s just no doubt about the advantage good freehand drawing skills give you when working in pastel (fig 3). One of the things I like about them the most (unlike graphite) is being able to draw the negative spaces to get the subject’s shapes and curves where you want them, the ability to draw light over dark (fig 4), and the way you can fix it and work over or scruff off the excess and go again and again as long as the tooth is maintained. For me it can be so much more relaxed a medium than graphite, but without good freehand drawing skills it would just be frustrating which I think is probably the main reason more and more people are succumbing to the use of non-freehand methods such as grids and projectors. Sadly just another aspect of the ongoing general degeneration of human ‘creativity’ in the time-poor modern world.
Sculpture/woodcarving
Whether your 3-D work is figurative or abstract, or you carefully pre-plan it before picking up a tool or just hoy in like a crazy person, the proportional judgement gained while developing freehand drawing skills are almost impossible to do without when working in the third dimension. I think most sculptors/carvers develop (sketch/ draw) an idea on paper before they start chipping and chopping but even if you subscribe to the frenetic faith of unconscious instinct (fig 5) you still have to be able to judge aesthetically pleasing curves and proportions, relative sizes and orientations of the various elements of your work. The best way to develop such skills is by starting with a basis of good drawing technique.
Illuminated Script/ Calligraphy
This one’s pretty much self explanatory. Calligraphy is a beautiful, sometimes breath-taking but extremely demanding and unforgiving artform all of its own as anyone who has ever seriously tried it can attest. Even though it’s based on letters, words, and embellishment instead of subjects, compositions, and textures being portrayed, the skills required are very much the same. Hand/ eye co-ordination and downright hand control, along with confidence and an eye for elegant curves and fine detail. Illuminated script pretty much takes it all up a notch or three (fig 6). I have always been fascinated by the concept of joining artistic imagery and the written word. It’s a very ancient concept and can be spectacular when done well. I have squirreled away a whole bunch of materials and equipment to have my own stab at this beautiful art form one day when the seemingly random wheels of time relent and let it be so but without freehand drawing skills I might as well whistle dixie in a high wind than hold out any hope of a worthwhile result.
There probably isn’t any of the visual arts that couldn’t be planned and/or carried out a lot better with good freehand drawing skills to draw upon but it helps me be an artist in other ways as well. If I am repairing things that need pulling apart or even making something from scratch for the studio or workshop I always either do a quick sketch of the individual parts of the machine lined up the way they came apart so I know they’re going to be re-assembled the right way around, or draw a bit of a design mudmap on the concrete floor with a bit of chalk before I start making whatever I need. Being able to do that really helps me in a lot of ways (and always has) to actually afford to be a full time artist. So the ability to quickly draw what I am pulling apart or need to make from scratch helps in a very practical and exponential way to maintain a life as an actual fine artist and actually have the chance to carry out serious drawing projects at all.
As a drawer I might be nowadays seen as the poor relation of the art world but that’s fine by me, I can’t help feeling rich in other ways when wandering around in the vast paddock of creative freedom freehand drawing allows and getting lost on the endless plain of potential it opens up. There’s no doubt that if you want your art to improve overall, look to your sketching and drawing skills.
They’re at the core of all art. ■