Measured Marks

I’m in Portland, taking a 3-day figure drawing intensive with Fran O’Neill. Saturday was Day 2 of my intensive, and though about mid-day I was cranky, I ended the day on a high. I did not want to stop.

I learned a new way of drawing. Isn’t it thrilling that I can draw for so many years, and still learn something totally new. People underestimate the potential of drawing, I think. It’s just the same old burnt stick and paper, but the approach is new and interesting to my puzzle-loving brain.

In recent beginning figure drawing classes, I’ve been teaching League students how to draw with sight sizing, envelopes, construction lines, and what I call “straight line measures.”

For sight sizing and construction lines, students use a stick to measure comparative lengths and angles, and apply them to their drawing. For my class, we start with the biggest shape first, which is the envelope around the form. Construction lines are not an instant process, the figure starts as a big weird box shape and the figure’s features do not emerge from those straight lines for quite a while, so the drawings take a lot of patience and a lot of looking and re-looking.

(I need to put a pic here. There is a drawing on the wall in the studio right now that is perfect.)

The construction line drawing builds up from layers of light straight lines measured out across the page, then is adjusted and redrawn at increasingly accurate angles and smaller lengths, each stage getting more precise, honing in on the form. These straight lines eventually construct a figure, within many pentimenti. 

Pentimento – a change made by the artist during the process of drawing or painting. Pentimento is derived from the Italian ‘pentirsi’, which means to repent or change your mind. 

The artist stays acutely focused and patiently engaged throughout the drawing process, looking for clues and reference points as shapes emerge. I think this process makes beautiful drawings.

What I learned today is related to this process. I’ll call it a close cousin. In the hands of Giacometti, it might look like this:

I still measure, but instead of big straight lines measuring an object in the middle of a blank background, a whole scene is measured in short increments all over. Little notches or lines mark each measurement across the page, instead of one object enveloped by long lines. Similarly, the whole drawing is worked evenly but in this case the environment is key to measuring because I need to keep moving all around the page, finding as many points as possible. Even if there’s a mis-measurement somewhere I keep moving around and around the whole drawing, all the way from the center of the paper to the edge.If I’m off, I’ll produce many different measurements for one point. The short incremental marks eventually resolve into a cohesive form, but the process of short quick marks jumping all over the page leaves a lot of room for movement, because nothing is locked in for a long time. This is a very slow process. It can take anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours for a single drawing, and I can see how it can keep an especially dedicated artist occupied for days and weeks if they really got into it.

In the areas where there were no objects to jump to, my measurements got a little bit lost, and I found myself wanting to put some tape on the floor just to have more places to land. I realized this is similar to the process Euan Uglow used.

Antonio Lopez Garcia put white marks on fruit and leaves in a tree so he could measure properly, and then he painted those marks in the painting.

Peri Schwartz also made measuring marks – these along the walls, tables, and even books in her studio, and then she included the marks in her paintings too.

This measuring process also might be related to to Ann Gale’s paintings, only she chooses not to have her image resolve.

Mis-measurements are part of this process, because models breathe, scenes change, and my page was so large I had to move around to reach it. Every time I moved, my perspective changed, and my measurements shifted.

While somewhat frustrating to not “get it right” on the first round of marks, I felt this was a very fun game, and one I could play for a long time without getting bored. I also thought the effects of my measurements (the pentimenti) were beautiful. I thought they made the drawing more engaging, and gave the viewer pathways and interest points around the drawing. I did not want to stop drawing. It was such an enjoyable process, and unstoppable because it had not yet “resolved.” The only reason I did stop was because the models got up and walked away and they were locking up the building. Darnit.

More tomorrow!