Thoughts on Drawing

By Lynea Bull

Drawing this semester has given me the opportunity to work art into my life a little more. These past 4 years at Duke haven't really allowed for me to keep up with art and playing music so it was really nice to get back into it. I was a little skeptical because I enjoy more imaginative/fantasy/cartoon drawings and still life has never been something I've enjoyed. I still don't enjoy still life drawings of inanimate objects. And I especially don't like backgrounds. I think that's mostly because I'm not used to taking so much time and putting so much effort into something that isn't in the foreground or the main figure in the drawing. However, I've learned that I am capable of drawing backgrounds for my drawings. The assignments where we worked in mid-ground and background images into the drawing really helped me out.

I've also learned that I'm not fond of using charcoal at all. I find it really messy and can't seem to figure out how to keep the rest of my drawing clean. I actively avoided it after the one assignment that required it. I might take a stab at it again, sometime this summer, but I don't really see myself getting too invested in using it.

Overall, I really enjoyed this semester. I was so happy to get to draw again. At times, especially when I was feeling the heat of a deadline, drawing for class felt like a chore. Most times, it was very enjoyable. It reminded me of what I used to like doing in high school and it made me really happy. There's a sense of fulfillment you can get from finishing a drawing and being satisfied with its outcome (in whole or even just little parts of the drawing), and I really missed that.

The Life and Work of Albrecht Dürer - Amanda Jordan

Albrecht Dürer - Amanda Jordan

“The Germans, so easily regimented in political and military life, were prone to extreme subjectivity and individualism in religion, in metaphysical thought and, above all, in art.” (Panofsky 3)

German artist Albrecht Dürer was born in Nuremberg on May 21, 1471. His father was Hungarian, coming to Nuremberg to apprentice a goldsmith, later marrying his master’s daughter. Albrecht became the apprentice to his father and became quite skilled; however, he sought more. He asked to enter the workshop of a painter and in November of 1486 was apprenticed to a prominent painter in Nuremberg, Michael Wolgemut. He receives instruction in many branches of art and soon becomes influenced by drawings and prints of artists outside of Nuremberg. This influence sparks curiosity about the world of art outside of his native area, ultimately leading to his journey through much of Eastern, and later, Western Europe. He begins illustrating for many publishers and later, in 1494, gets married-though it is said he “outgrew the intellectual level and social sphere of his wife”.

Dürer’s interest in art and philosophy outside of Northern Europe draws him to Italy, where his close friend Willibald Pirckheimer is studying at Pavia. At this time, the arts and philosophy were experiencing a return to classical antiquity, and Dürer felt that German artists should participate in what was going on in this so called regrowth, termed “wiederwachsung” in German. This was followed by some of his most productive years in terms of number of works produced. He created an altarpiece for the altar of Our Lady at the National Church San Bartolomeo, and continued making lengthy trips to Italy. It is even said that while“he was honored by his German friends and by Venetian nobility, [he was] much envied by his fellow Italian artists” (Panofsky 6). In 1512 he was employed by Emperor Maximilian I, though when the Emperor dies in January of 1519 he returns home. In these years, Dürer becomes what art historians deem an “erudite” artist - he fully participates in intellectual movements of the period, engaging with scholars and scientists, not limiting himself to his artwork. In this manner, it is true that Dürer was “insatiably interested in every curious thing produced by man or nature” (Panofsky 10). However, upon attempting to view a beached whale in the swamps of Zeeland, Dürer contracts malarial fever and passes away on April 6, 1528.

Dürer’s name resonates through the Renaissance alongside artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Through the trajectory of his life, his works progresses - intially he depicts animals, costumes and landscape, transitioning to biblical themes, and philosophical and theological allegories, even satirical subjects. He presents a wealth of detail in his work, leaving behind,

“more than six dozen paintings, more than a hundred engravings, about two hundred and fifty woodcuts, more than a thousand drawings, and three printed books on geometry, fortification and the theory of human proportions, the last of which appeared about six months after his death” (10 Panofsky).

Though many know Dürer for his famous Hands of an Apostle, also known as The Praying Hands, which is a 1508 sketch for an altarpiece commissioned by Jakob Heller (see image), I would like to present some of his other works.

The aesthetic quality, expression, and refinement attract me to Dürer’s work, as is evident in those included below:

(from top to bottom: Feet of a Kneeling Man 1526, Head of a Young Woman 1521-1522, Self-portrait with bandage 1491-1492, Study of Drapery I 1508, The Man of Sorrows 1522)

Not only am I intrigued by Dürer's body of work, but also by his philosophy:

"When Dürer says "But if thou hast no right foundation it is impossible for thee to make something correct and good even though thou mayst have the greatest practice and freedom of hand in the world," he is in complete agreement with Leonardo who wrote: "Those who are enamored of practice without science are like sailors who board a ship without rudder and compass, never having any certainty as to whither they go."" (Panofsky 273)

Dürer's drawings evoke a certain austerity and beauty which seems to be evident throughout the body of his work.

Panofsky, Erwin. The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1945, Print.

Russell, Francis. The World of Dürer 1471-1528. NY: Time, 1967. Print.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) gained early success as a painter winning the Prix de Rome when he was only twenty-one, but his trip was delayed as a result of the Napoleonic Wars until 1806. His first high profile commission came from the French Legislative Assembly for a Portrait of Napoleon on his Imperial Throne which was displayed in the Salon and heavily criticized by the French Academy. Ingres’s initial paintings in Italy were poorly received, but with the true air of a Romanticist he stayed in Italy for additional fourteen years, frequently impoverished, after his original four year stipend expired. Ingres continued to send painting s back to the Salon in Paris which were usually met with disapproval. In 1821, Ingres was poor and all but forgotten by his French peers, when he was commissioned for the huge painting The Vow of Louis XIII. The painting led to rave reviews at the Salon in 1824, and Ingres’s life began to turn around. When Napoleon fell in 1815 his head painter was exiled stalling the careers of all his students leaving France especially receptive to a new master which Ingres graciously filled. In 1825, Ingres was elected to the French Academy (which he had abhorred), quickly became its director, and was awarded the Legion of Honor. Not only has history remembered Ingres’s paintings as the face of the Salon from 1820s-1860s, his style and imagery have been recalled by countless artists.

I chose Ingres because despite being best known for his large scale oil paintings, his pencil drawings, especially his portraitures are rich with emotion and truly reflect the people he was passionate about. You can see both his Romanticist and Neoclassicist influences in the way he gracefully portrays his figures. All of the drawings displayed here were done in pencil.

This is a portrait of Ingres’s wife, Madeleine Chapelle, glowing with pregnancy. They were recommended to each other by friends and courted through letter writing. Ingres proposed to Madeleine without ever meeting her, and by all accounts they had a very happy marriage except they were unable to have children. Their only child (the one she is carrying in the drawing) was stillborn.
This is a portrait of Franz Liszt, an incredibly talented and popular Hungarian pianist. Ingres, being a gifted violinist himself, drew many of the famous and influential musicians who visited him in Italy. This is a family portrait of the Lethier family. I like his diverse use of line, and how their is such affection between all of the family members.

Downey, Charles T. "Ingres at the Louvre." Rev. of Ingres Retrospective at the Louvre. Web log post. Blogger.com. Ionarts, 26 Mar. 2006. Web. 7 Oct. 2009. http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2006/03/ingres-at-louvre-part-1-of-2.html.

Harrison, Charles, Francis Frascina, and Gill Perry. Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction. New Haven & London: Yale UP in association with The Open University, 1994. Print.

Janson, H. W. Janson's history of art the western tradition. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007. Print.

Frank Gehry

Frank Owen Gehry was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on February 28, 1929. He received his undergraduate degree in architecture from University of Southern California in 1954 and for the few years after, he worked full time for various firms including Victor Gruen Associates and Pereira and Luckman Associates. Gehry then studied briefly at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and spent a year in Paris working for André Rémondet and studying great architects such as Le Corbusier and Balthasar Neumann before returning to the states and opening an office in Santa Monica in 1962 (About Frank Gehry: A brief biography). His practice expanded and in 2002, the Gehry partnership, Gehry Partners, LLP, was formed. Frank Gehry himself heads every single project that the firm undertakes and sees each project through to completion with the help of his staff as well as “Digital Project, a sophisticated 3D computer modeling program originally created for use by the aerospace industry, to thoroughly document designs and to rationalize the bidding, fabrication, and construction processes.” (GehryPartners LLP) Frank Gehry’s works include but are not limited to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Dancing House in Prague, and his own private residence in Santa Monica, California.

Frank Gehry has described himself in the past as "a symmetrical freak and a grid freak" (architecture + process 140), but when we realized this was holding him back, he began to design by focusing on the forms that make up his structures.

These are a series of pictures showing the Ray & Maria Stata Center at MIT's development. The first shows Gehry's original sketch of how he visualized the project. As you can see, Gehry's sketches are extremely messy with no real defined shapes or distinguishable features. He does a lot of scribbling and conceptualizing while putting his ideas down on paper, resulting in vague drawings that make viewers unable to form the final product in their minds.

The second shows a design model in the process of being changed according to Gehry's desires. Similar to his sketches, Gehry's design process models are very messy and involve a lot of crumpled paper or various textures that can be achieved from everyday items. His models seem more artistic as opposed to architectural. In fact, when I first saw pictures of his models I wondered how they could possibly translate to actual structures on a larger scale.

The third photograph shows the final design model for the building. Obviously it looks more polished than the design process models and does resemble a building. However, it still retains its artistic qualities and curvilinear edges that make it unique to Gehry's style of design.

These two pictures are of the Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague, Czech Republic Gehry designed in the mid 90's. Once again, the first is a sketch of Gehry's design done with the same messiness as the Stata Center. I found it interesting while reading about this building that after Gehry designed the first tower resembling a dress, everyone involved laughed at him and Gehry said in his interview that "They didn't understand where [he] was going" (architecture + process 170). I think that is a prevalent characteristic of Frank Gehry's.

The second photograph is of the finished building. You can make out the shapes that Gehry drew originally in the final design but the details found in the structure are not represented in the sketch. I absolutely love the way this building looks because it is extremely playful with the wavy lines and the random placement of windows. It has a cartoon-like feel to it and I think to be able to pull this off in a building is phenomenal.

Friedman, Mildred. Gehry talks: architecture + process. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, 1999.

“About Frank Gehry: A brief biography.” Frank Gehry – Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate. 31 March 2008 .

GehryPartners LLP. 2007. Frank O. Gehry & Associates. 31 March 2008. .

Sir John Tenniel

Sir John Tenniel was born in 1820 in London, England. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts and in 1836 he sent his first picture to the exhibition of the Society of British Artists. In 1845, Tenniel submitted a cartoon, An Allegory of Justice, to a mural competition for the new Palace of Westminster, and received a commission to paint a fresco in the House of Lords. He became well known for his original and good-humored political cartoons in Punch, but is best remembered for his illustrations in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as well as Through the Looking Glass. Sir Tenniel's style of drawing ranged from "high art" to "scholarly caricature." Roger Simpson described it as "an often forced formal art contrast[ing] with a comic art of almost unprecedented vigor and inventiveness" (Sir John Tenniel, 11).

The first drawing is called "Do I look very pale?" and was drawing by Tenniel in 1872. It was an illustration for Through the Looking Glass. The second drawing is called "London's Nightmare," drawn in 1866. The last drawing is called "A Pan-Anglican Oversight," drawn in 1867.

I chose these three drawings because they show the different types of drawings that Sir John Tenniel did. The first one is representative of all of his illustrations for Lewis Carroll's books. The second show's Tenniel's political drawing side, and the third shows a more realistic approach to drawing as opposed to satirical or caricaturistic. His style, however, remains constant between each drawing. He uses mostly lines in his work, even when creating values. He creates cross-hatching patterns most of the time to achieve darker areas in his illustrations. Tenniel is very good at not making his drawings look messy even with all of the lines going in various directions. I like Sir Tenniel's style not only because is it more lines than values, but also because he pays very close attention to detail and manages to create cartoons with detailed features. He is able to capture the silly nature of what he is depicting without losing realistic touches in his work.

Simpson, Roger. Sir John Tenniel: Aspects of his work. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1994.