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• What would my class be like? Well, purely hypothetically since I don't have experience of those students, I'd try and foster an understanding of the role of point & line at a global historical level. Western perspective on drawing being one element of many. Visual literacy (observational skill) is the key concept to develop - 100% agreed. Visual literacy starts with point, line & plane. I'd get them to experiment with formal exercises that made them think harder about something they possibly take for granted, but in reality probably don't know that much about - unlearn what they had learned up to that point the purpose of which would be to consider the relationship between form and content. I can't remember who made the comment that photography represents reality and drawing represents ideas, but it's a good way of getting the message across that since the camera, fine art, illustration and drawing as disciplines was freed from the preoccupation of representation.

  posted 5 months, 1 week ago in On a scale from one to ten how good am I at drawing?

• Self-consciousness comes from exactly that point I'm making about an ideal standard of representational drawing - the expectation in Western schools is that you're bad at drawing when you start when compared to the teacher, who in turn is inferior to a master like Dürer. Kids draw stick figures when they start drawing, why? Probably because a line is the easiest form to create as a representational mark. So the train of art school thought is that we want to represent the world as it is, and therefore need to develop control of light and volume - fine, no issue there - that's one side of drawing. But what about the Chinese appreciation of line? There's no following of Western principles of drawing, but would you dismiss their appreciation of line as inferior?

  The expectation from art tutoring at school level is that figurative drawing is the ideal when there is no such ideal - drawing is not a tool, or a utility with rules. It has no system. How do you define drawing at your school? As soon as you mention rules and basic principles you reduce the form to a system, but a system is definable with ins, flows and outs, drawing does not have those characteristics.

  There is a very strong drawing exhibition near my home town at the moment, and I doubt anyone here with a conventional appreciation of the term would recognise any of the forms shown - it takes a conceptual leap of faith to let go of a 500 year old tradition and I don't expect anyone to agree with me or the curators of exhibitions that are questioning what drawing is or what it can be. But one thing that is clear to me is the distinction between drawing and other creative disciplines.

  For instance, typography is a tool with a defined purpose, and thus has rules which when learned can be broken in interesting and informed ways. Drawing doesn't fall into this category, because it's form is constantly changing. You no more need to learn observational drawing than you need to learn how to paint to be an artist - but art isn't the question here. Drawing is distinct from art. It shares one aspect with art in that unlike say graphic design you can take an art sign out of it's context and it remains art. Take a graphic design artefact out of it's context and it ceases to have purpose.

  You're right in saying practice of observational drawing helps develop the skills you mention - and to be a master of volume and light you need to practice a set of craft based skills. But defining drawing by craft, or by utility alone doesn't acknowledge either global history of line or current thinking on what drawing is.

  posted 5 months, 1 week ago in On a scale from one to ten how good am I at drawing?

• Rachel Ray Gun said:

  It's just a good way to grow.

  Here in lies the issue. You're assuming that realism is the ultimate goal of drawing, that you start off bad at drawing, because of youth and inexperience. You're only valuing something you can observe. That's only one side of drawing - it's the dominant side of drawing because realism is so easy to comprehend, but it's still only half the story.

  posted 5 months, 1 week ago in On a scale from one to ten how good am I at drawing?

• Rachel, what do you mean by basics? What are these rules to mark making that can be bent? It's bad learning to think that realism is the starting point of drawing, imo. At 14 you should be encouraged to carry on thinking, and questioning like a child without bias towards some prescribed notion of excellence.

  posted 5 months, 1 week ago in On a scale from one to ten how good am I at drawing?

• Manupix said:

  I'll skip the questions and go directly to advice, if you don't mind.

  • serious mode on *

  You are making the common yet mistaken assumption that you can draw from your head: not so (no one can, nor should). You can only draw from life.

  Manupix, you're making the mistake of assuming there is one correct way to draw. There is no law that says you can't draw from memory. If you're looking to make photorealistic depictions of figures then by all means study the effect of light on volume. However, reality doesn't equate to all there is to drawing. None of my favourite drawings depict real things.

  It all depends on what it is you want your drawings to convey. If you want to draw scientific representations of plants or people then you have to acquire knowledge of light and volume. If you want to convey the effect of memory on learning or emotions, then drawing from memory would be a good place to go to.

  posted 5 months, 1 week ago in On a scale from one to ten how good am I at drawing?