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How good does one need to be at drawing in order to paint well?
galina
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in Color Mixing
Hello! First, I would like cheers Mark to being a decent human and sharing your knowledge with the world. Knowing your intention to allow everyone to learn for free, I think you have done really well and it's hard to think of ways in which you could do better since you.have already shared that much. Thank you.
I am turning 21 tomorrow and have some strange experience with painting as I was not originally an artist but in my junior year I took an art class in which my teacher was a painter but not a good teacher and he just left us to do what we want. At fist, I was stuck and spent about a year just contemplating what it means to be an artist and what is good art. In my senior year I took full advantage of the fact that my school had free supplies and it was all winsor&nNewton like as much as you want, for free. So I had the unique opportunity to really dive into it, explore, throw away large canvases when they just didn't work out, paint on ungessoed, use oil sticks. I took a bunch of paint and canvas at home and in that last year of school all I did was paint.
Here comes my question. Since then I travelled for a year, I taught preschool kids for a year, and this year I finally got to learning how to draw/paint. But I am totally drawn to painting and find none or very little joy in drawing. Perhaps it's due to my lack of formal training and practice in shading with a pencil and drawing the human form in pencil but daaaamm that is hard, way harder than painting. For example in my country Bulgaria there is an academy where I applied to study a bachelor in mural painting, where the entrance exam is to draw a human in pencil you need a very high level. But part of me feels that this level of proficiency in shading and hitchhatching in the way of the form, and so on and so forth is really a skill for graphics artist or whatever they are called. Please let me know what you think the extent or level one needs to reach in order to be a good painter. Obviously things like being able to see and measure are important for under paintings.i guess my specific question is if you think I need to sit on my but and really get through it and learn this pencil thing or I can just do my best and focus more on painting, as my end goals have nothing to do with being a pencil artist, I just use it for sketching out ideas.
I am turning 21 tomorrow and have some strange experience with painting as I was not originally an artist but in my junior year I took an art class in which my teacher was a painter but not a good teacher and he just left us to do what we want. At fist, I was stuck and spent about a year just contemplating what it means to be an artist and what is good art. In my senior year I took full advantage of the fact that my school had free supplies and it was all winsor&nNewton like as much as you want, for free. So I had the unique opportunity to really dive into it, explore, throw away large canvases when they just didn't work out, paint on ungessoed, use oil sticks. I took a bunch of paint and canvas at home and in that last year of school all I did was paint.
Here comes my question. Since then I travelled for a year, I taught preschool kids for a year, and this year I finally got to learning how to draw/paint. But I am totally drawn to painting and find none or very little joy in drawing. Perhaps it's due to my lack of formal training and practice in shading with a pencil and drawing the human form in pencil but daaaamm that is hard, way harder than painting. For example in my country Bulgaria there is an academy where I applied to study a bachelor in mural painting, where the entrance exam is to draw a human in pencil you need a very high level. But part of me feels that this level of proficiency in shading and hitchhatching in the way of the form, and so on and so forth is really a skill for graphics artist or whatever they are called. Please let me know what you think the extent or level one needs to reach in order to be a good painter. Obviously things like being able to see and measure are important for under paintings.i guess my specific question is if you think I need to sit on my but and really get through it and learn this pencil thing or I can just do my best and focus more on painting, as my end goals have nothing to do with being a pencil artist, I just use it for sketching out ideas.
Comments
Welcome to the DMP Forum.
Here is part of my answer to a similar question I answered a few hours ago:
This is is an enjoyable way to learn line, shape, edge, tone, value, perspective, proportion, foreshortening, anatomy, posing, composition, action, gesture, measurement, shading, negative shapes, subtractive drawing, tonal drawing, sight sizing, lighting, photography .... etc.
All of these skills and techniques are foundational for painting. Sketch in a book daily if you can.
During this learning you can be painting too. Using the proportional divider and color checker will help you to see and produce a great painting. However, if you want to achieve a high artistic skill level drawing is important.
Drawing remains a central and pivotal activity to the work of many artists and designers – a touchstone and tool of creative exploration that informs visual discovery. It fundamentally enables the visualisation and development of perceptions and ideas. With a history as long and intensive as the history of our culture, the act of drawing remains a fundamental means to translate, document, record and analyse the worlds we inhabit. The role of drawing in education remains critical, and not just to the creative disciplines in art and design for which it is foundational.
As a primary visual language, essential for communication and expression, drawing is as important as the development of written and verbal skills. The need to understand the world through visual means would seem more acute than ever; images transcend the barriers of language, and enhance communications in an increasingly globalised world.
Download this free book.
https://archive.org/details/loomis_FIGURE_draw
If painting from life you can take a pic of the setup then trace it or draw using a proportional divider.
This might help explain the difference between the schools of art who favour line, and those who favour tone:
Disegno or Colorito: Florence Versus Venice
The question as to which was more important in art, drawing (disegno) or colour (colorito), was answered differently according to whether you lived in Florence or Venice. The fact was, painters from different areas of Italy approached the depiction of nature quite differently and, as a result, created works of art that differ not only in technique and appearance but in their very conception. During the Renaissance in Florence, a city sandwiched between Siena and the Papal States, artists looked for inspiration to the humanism and order of Classical Antiquity. For these Florentine painters "drawing" or "design," was seen as the key starting point of artistic endeavour, the primary means for portraying nature as realistically as possible.
However, artists of the Renaissance in Venice had a completely different view. Their powerful northern Italian Republic, with its worldwide maritime trading links and overland trade routes, had close associations with Byzantine art, famous for its shimmering gold icons and mosaic art, and its inattention to figurative realism. Not surprisingly therefore, Venetian art favoured a more colouristic approach, bolstered no doubt by its trade in colour pigments, such as Ultramarine (Lapis Lazuli), Chinese Red, Indian "Lac", Verdigris and Indigo. (See also: Renaissance Colour Palette.) This Venetian colourism was further stimulated by the city's damp climate, which was less suited to fresco and tempera paints, and more suited to oil painting - a medium which thrived on sophisticated colour and tone. See also: Legacy of Venetian Painting on European art.
For optimum naturalism, Venetian painters placed a particularly high value on the correct application of colour, without which they believed no artist could properly capture the real effects of light and thus the true appearance of the object. The Venetian School of painting therefore paid great attention to the process of layering and blending colours to achieve a glowing richness. For an artform and period which illustrates the difference between disegno and colorito, see: Venetian altarpieces (c.1500-1600). See also or short review: Titian and Venetian Colour Painting (c.1500-76).
To the artists of the Florentine Renaissance a picture was composed of shape plus colour; to a Venetian it was shape fused with colour. To the Florentine, colour, however harmonious, was a quality to be added to design. To the Venetian it was inseparable from design. See Venetian painting.I drew a lot as a kid - mostly cartoon and comic book characters. I could copy pretty well but not really sketch. Last summer I took a sketching course that changed everything. I left after four days confident that I could draw anything I wanted. The course taught me two critical skills: values and measuring. That’s all you need, but it’s essential for painting.
Leonardo was pretty clear about the importance of drawing if you wanted to be a great painter.
I’ve always loved Delacroix’s quote: “If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth storey (sic) to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works.” Delacroix took his drawing very seriously. I think his painting speaks for itself.
You can paint without drawing well, but drawing skills separates the wheat from the chaff.
I found this style / technique to be inspirational.
Minimal kit, maximum freedom, draw from shoulder, cheap newsprint and a crayon.
Draw hundreds at figure drawing class, laminate the keepers, mulch the rest.
Denis