Art & Perception

Drawing can be done directly on a painting surface, but working on paper, and then transferring has advantages. Most obvious is that one can make many drawings and then select the best to transfer to a clean white canvas or panel. Another advantage is that drawing allows for experimentation with picture dimensions, before committing to a particular painting surface.

To transfer a drawing, without enlarging or reducing the size, tracing paper is useful. Tracing paper goes back at least to the 14th century (Cennino Cennini describes three techniques for making it). After the drawing is traced to the paper, it can be transferred to the painting surface in different ways. One is to rub the back of the tracing paper with charcoal, position the paper on a white grounded panel, then go over the lines with a hard pencil or stylus. This is the original carbon paper. Another technique is to prick holes in the tracing paper and then use a pouncing bag with charcoal dust to bring the design onto the painting surface. This is better for canvases, because it does not require the strong local pressure of using a pencil or stylus. Furthermore, it is easy to make a transfer, wipe of the charcoal dust, and make another, to experiment with different positioning of the design on the canvas.

Once the drawing is transferred (either in charcoal lines or dots), it must be fixed, using black ink or paint. Once this is done, the charcoal can be removed, and the drawing developed further before underpainting.

For a painting that develops over several days, it is helpful to work with explicit painting layers. The first layer may be an underdrawing. Then comes an underpainting, and finally, an overpainting. I like to think of the underpainting as a base-rhythm in music, and the over-painting as a solo played over this.

Posted by Alice Brasser

Painting and making sculpture are today considered as separate pursuits with little interaction between the two. Historically, sculpture and painting had important influences on each other. Below Lorenzo Ghiberti (in his Commentaries) describes some of his contribution to this process:

Also by making sketches in wax and clay for painters, sculptors, and stone carvers and by making designs of many things for painters, I have helped many of them to achieve the greatest honors for their works.

These “sketches” in wax and clay were presumably small figure models. For the painter, they would provide life-like models with the patience of a still-life.
For my current painting projects I have been making figure “sketches” in both clay and wax, and I have been amazed at how helpful these are. Lately I have been using wax more than clay, because wax is more stable than unfired clay. Firing the clay produces a strong model, of course, but it then cannot be changed easily.

[This topic thread moved to The Homunculus]

The experience of sculpting from life, which gave me such a rich way of looking and working, made me question the value of the drawing that I normally do. Now that I am getting over the initial shock of sculpting from life, I begin to appreciate the contribution of drawing to the sculpting process. First, drawing is much faster, so capturing a sudden lively gesture is much easier in drawing. The proportions and details may be all wrong, but if the drawing captures the feeling of the gesture, then it is possible to get the other aspects right in the sculpture with a gradual working process. Second, I’ve realized that my life drawings contain more information that I thought, and the sculpting helps me to interpret the drawings more completely.

I also started working with wax today, which has the advantage that it is lighter lets me make figures that stand without any support.

I’ve been having a lively email discussion with the artist-sculptor who runs the Michelangelo’s Models website. Although the history of Michelangelo’s sculptural models is controversial (I discuss one viewpoint in an essay on the Sistine Chapel), the various proposals about his working methods can be inspirational for artists today. That is not to say one should be casual about evaluating Michelangelo’s methods, of course. It is only to say that even a speculative art-historical idea can be of value in the creative process, if it proves its worth in practice.

Today I worked for many hours on a clay model of my two-year old son’s head. I worked from some dozens of life-drawings that I have been making over many weeks. Each drawing is from a different viewpoint, which is what I need for the sculpture. And yet it was difficult to get the likeness. Finally when he came home from daycare, I followed him around the apartment as he played with a toy tractor. With the clay model in my hands, I made rapid and decisive progress on the sculpture — even though he did not remain still for more than a moment. In half an hour I accomplished more than in the eight hours working from the drawings.

This experience has challenged my idea of what I am doing as an artist when I draw. Some time ago a sculptor said to me that painters and sculptors draw in different ways. He did not elaborate — perhaps he could not — but the concept has intrigued me ever since. Today I begin to sense the need for a different manner of drawing for sculpture. As a painter, I try to draw to capture light and shade, and through this, the illusion of form. What I realized is that the illusion of form is precisely that, an illusion, and the actual information conveyed is less than what we might imagine. Next time I draw I will try to focus on conveying the information of form more explicitly, rather than the illusion of form through the effects of light.

I have been drawing from life for years, but I only recently tried modeling in clay from life. For one project I made a portrait of my three-year-old daughter (now four years old). Three-year-old girls never pose, of course. This makes drawing them difficult.

Sculpting in clay is a different matter. I made a clay head about one-third life-size, not attached to a base so I could hold and turn it in my hands. Every time she moved, I turned the sculpture and modeled whatever view I had for that moment. It took time and persistence, but after a few sessions I made a good likeness. I was surprised at how easy it was, given how little experience I had in this medium. But there is a logic behind it.

The challenge in drawing is to transform three dimensions into two dimensions. Without a consistent viewpoint, the process is somewhat hopeless. With sculpture, this transformation in dimensions is not an issue, and every viewpoint holds useful information. By going to the third dimension, the most difficult drawing problems become doable as sculpture.