Wayne Kimball collage constructions a cake fit for Julia Childs
Shayne Eliason's construction
Drawing and the Figure
What kinds of issues
or ideas does working with the human figure bring to mind?
What essential or
provocative questions might you ask?
Kerry James Marshall
You cannot escape cultural influences,
influences of tradition and artistic influences. Neither can your students. You are either working within a tradition
(often without knowing it) or working against a tradition or convention of
picture or art making. What you choose to put in your classroom, in your slide,
your object or painting, if you choose to drag your students to the museum,
which changes the experience entirely. You cannot choose to not influence
your students, they are already been given influences by their culture and
society, and some of those influences are not very healthy.
Questions:
What kinds of issues, or ideas does working with the human
form bring to mind?
Why is drawing the human so difficult?
Why would engaging with l figure drawing be a good thing to
do in art class?
How can images of the human figure be used to express
important ideas?
How do images of the human body influence our sense of
identity?
How do art and popular visual culture reflect ideas about
human beauty?
How does clothing give us power and help us construct our
identity? What do clothes mean?
What are the meanings of nudity in art and visual culture?
What makes a good drawing and what is the range of possible in
drawings?
How can the complexities of human anatomy be understood and
used artistically?
Figure Drawing
Why would I want to make a drawing of the human body? The figure drawing class with student sitting
around the nude model seems so old fashioned and quaint in our pornified society. The attempt to master the craft, skills, and
knowledge required to make a figure drawing is often reserved for illustrators,
animators, or those looking back to Renaissance masters. What is its place for K-12 or college art students? Although new media and technologies have
important and unexpected places within the art curriculum, traditional forms of
artistic expression can also provide significant artistic experiences if the
are given meaning in the contexts of contemporary art, culture, and the lives
of students.
So, one possible rationale for working with the human figure
is to touch a deep and respected tradition of art making within the conventions
of the European Renaissance, which recast Greek ideas about artistic expression
into a hybrid combination of humanism and Christianity that had, at its center,
a focus on depicting the human figure.
This tradition continues today in the work of many illustrators,
animators, cartoonists, graphic novelists, and other contemporary artists.
Another rationale, then, might be to give students fluency using the human
figure within this set of artistic conventions so that they could work in, and
join the artistic conversation of these contemporary artists.
Another possible rationale for studying the figure is how it
grasps our attention and the attention of our students because of the
complexities and beauty of the human form, from the bones to the how we clothe
ourselves. Making this a subject of artistic investigation requires careful
noticing, observation, and concentration.
It can involve the study of artistic anatomy and the artwork of those
who have used the figure, following lines of influence from the Ancient
Egyptians to the Greeks, Romans, European Renaissance to contemporary artists.
Another rationale for this study could be to investigate our
society’s obsession with fashion, clothing, class, and identity as it is
connected to our bodies. Lauren Greenfield’s Girl Culture, and her movie Thin,
explores these themes in the lives of adolescents.
As for approaches, I like to think of two interrelated
problems or challenges in figure drawing.
One is the problem of how to handle the complexities of the
subject. I like to begin this study with
the idea of the gesture study. This
approach focuses on the life and energy of the human form, and the life and
energy of the artist, as it is expressed in the gesture. So the gesture or
action drawing is both a way to think about the human form and a way to think
about our own interruption of the blank surface with our very personal act of
drawing.
The second challenge connected to this study is
exploring the range of mark-making. This
is why I like to work in newsprint, with water, ink, white tempera or gesso,
with large brushes and sticks. With students I like to expand the possible
range of ways to make a mark, and the possible range of tools to make these
marks, while at the same time doing careful observation and study of artists
and human anatomy. The making of a
figure drawing-painting can be an exciting and beautiful thing. It can also be the springboard for thinking
about visual culture, fashion, advertising, and identity. The study of figure drawing can be a deeply
enriching experience in itself and it can lead to other ideas and
projects.
gesture drawings Paul Vorst, 20th century
fashion
Kerry James Marshall
Kerry James Marshall
