D R A W I N G from the depths of my mind…

I love to teach, (seen my video series on Art History? No? There’s a link below), but there are some things that I just won’t teach to artists, or students, or art lovers, and that is how to draw. To learn to draw you have to take classes specifically geared at getting you acquainted with the different forms of graphite (pencils), charcoal, Conté Crayons, pastels et cetera et cetera. Then you learn to «see» and to «look» at your subject. Classes are good because they usually have models and I cannot do that from this blog…

But I will say that there are a few things that I can reach out and teach from this vantage point of mine, i.d. my blog, and that is I can try to guide you to think as an «artist» (whatever that is). First, there has to be an incredible urge to express, to reach out, to talk to someone out there, or to everyone. Musicians do that, and of course, their method (song, musical piece) is much more immediate, but we can do that with our art as well, now much easier thanks to the Internet.

Second, you have to know how to dominate and master your craft. That comes only with practice and time. And intimately tied to that is the development of talent. Talent is not something magical that is given to some and denied to others. Talent is a muscle that is developed through hard work. The more you draw the better you get, the more talented you get. Ever heard of «practise makes perfect»?

Don’t worry too much about creativity, imagination, originality or other such terms used by many to talk about art. Art does not depend upon creativity or on the artist’s imagination. And originality? What is that? Is there anything that has not been done before? Originality is not important. What is important is how you approach your subject matter and how you bring it to life on the canvas or the paper or with clay, bronze or even gold.

Art is created by the artist as a discipline, as a job well learned and well developed. It does not flow intuitively, like a child would do. And yes, intuitive art exists but it should exist solely as an experiment an exercise and as a way to get to a real work of art, which is something contrived and controlled, from beginning to end, by the will of the artist.

Here are some examples of some of the drawings I have been working on lately. Notice the line, and notice the development of the composition and how, after you know where your drawing is going, shadows are created, lines are reinforced or removed, altered, changed, in other words, turning the sketch into a finished work. And, of course, these are exercises, they are meant to be a finished work, but not something other than that, being a fully developed idea.

I will leave behind one of the Art History videos that I have been doing and from that one you can find in my channel many more.

Cheers…