December 6th, 2016

Addison Winston

Reflection on Drawing

Leonardo Da Vinci allegedly commented that “a painting is never finished but merely abandoned.”  The meaning of this statement is that the only when perfect could a painting be finished.  In this sense, if perfection is unattainable so is completion.  I think the same is all too often thought to be true of a drawing.  I do not mean that it is perfection for which one strives or should expect to find in a finished work, but rather that there is some end in mind and that end is seldom the drawing.  

Perhaps it is the way museums categorize and push aside “works on paper” that lends some spectre to drawing, photography, and even prints as somehow being distinct from sculpture and painting, but I think it is something more.  Although an architect delivers blueprints and although they are a finished product they represent a mere plan, an idea to be put forth in the finished form of a building.  

When I mention my passion for drawing, it is hard for me to separate a doodle on a sticky note, scribbled idea on a napkin, and a finished product to be framed and wrapped as a gift for a friend.   In short, while I may find joy, beauty, and completion in a drawing I always feel that drawing is viewed by those around me as the product of a hobby, a plan for a project, or as a rough draft for something grander… larger ...nobler.  

I took this class for the simple reason that I hoped to learn how to draw and shade with a pencil and to gain confidence in composing an image larger than the dozen or so black three by five inch notebooks in which I have sketched for the past few years.  In short, I took this class because I hoped to take a hobby I enjoy and transform it into an art I could practice. From a partially severed finger to a strange fever which kindly bestowed oozing red, brown, and yellow pustules on my hands and face, this semester was the strangest and most trying of my time at Duke.

 

The fact that I had to draw for this class is perhaps the thing which kept me sane.  Were I not in this course, I would have viewed doodling for an hour or two as procrastination, sating a personal desire instead of doing the work I had been assigned.  The requirement to complete four pages each week meant that anytime I was particularly stressed or facing a seemingly insurmountable mountain of work I would reach into my bag for a fountain pen and my sketchbook and averaged just over nine pages a week.

Throughout this class I felt like a failure.  It seemed I was not improving in my drawing as each piece was barely any different that the last.  It was not until yesterday that as I thumbed through my sketchbook that I realized what a shocking change my drawing had undergone both stylistically and technically.  

At the start of this semester I could only draw lines and preferably straight ones that intersected at right angles.  I am by no means a great draughtsman but I am now comfortable with shading forms, weighting lines, and portraying curving natural shapes in space with perspective.  Today I feel that I accomplished my mission in this class.  I am no longer scared of drawing with pencils or intimidated by a large blank sheet of paper.  When I look back on where I started this semester and where I finished I cannot help but feel some small tinge of pride.   More than this, I learned to create a finished drawing and while I have not yet reached the point of being an artist but I have found the path I can follow for the  that leads away from dabbling and scribbling and toward the peak that is artistry and mastery.  Perhaps, over the rest of my life I can slowly climb this mountain.

Thoughts on drawing

--by Coco Sheng

My interest in drawing originates from my passion for portrait photography. Each time when I was thinking about the photography composition, I used to draw them done like a very simple sketch. Then I found out that a little bit of drawing skills could enormously help improve the accuracy of my composition , as well as further understand relationships between objects in one photo.

What I originally though was to learn to draw people directly, but was told that I needed to start from the beginning, such as drawing geometric objects and still life. After one month of quick learning, I gradually developed my drawing style, which is highly detailed and very clean. This style requires enormous amount of time, due to accurate composition sketch and repeated shading process. What I enjoyed most was the sense of achievement when I looked at the realistic drawing I spent a whole day (8-10 hours) on, even for the most simple cubicle. I was always impressed by how you could perfect a drawing endlessly just by spending more time on it.  Before I started to draw people, I was fascinated with drawing old-fashioned oil lamps from middle ages. The different textures of glass, fire, rusty lampstand always caught my attention and made me amazed by the ancient craft.

This semester of drawing shed new lights on my drawing abilities and styles. I learned to appreciate objects from examining the negative spaces, by using charcoal which I did not know before but turned out to be so useful and fantastic. I was inspired to pay more attention to the surrounding environments rather than objects themselves. And my drawing style's drawback started to show, that I could hardly organize various objects well in one drawing. In other words, I was better at drawing a single object, but not at overlapping objects with different ideal scales and functions. Trying to offset this weakness, I spent more than 12 hours for each of the two last drawing assignments: photography drawing and fiction drawing. In the photography drawing, the people I inserted were still too separated from each other, which I improved in the fiction drawing. I learned to match subjects' eyesights, create interesting composition, as well as emphasize the theme. Hopefully my fiction drawing could represent my progress for this semester.

Drawing is always a time when I focus all my inner thoughts on one thing. I guess all art developing processes, including playing music and shooting photos, share the same thing: enjoy a moment of silence, peace and simplicity in the deepest mind. No bothering from fast-paced life, future considerations, or surrounding people. It is a moment where I feel like the only person on the earth, with full control of myself and my thoughts. 

Thoughts on Drawing- Courtney Werner

Under my bed at home is a big, three-ringed binder stuffed so full with drawings that I have difficulty turning the pages now. Flipping through it is like seeing a chronology of my childhood imagination, starting from when I first figured out how to hold a crayon. When I was little I made portraits of my stuffed animals, copied illustrations from picture books, and sketched what I saw outside my window. I drew my favorite cartoon characters, as well as countless characters that I made up. The binder is full of dogs, birds, horses, trees, superheroes, pokemon, dinosaurs, dragons, family members, and hybrid creatures straight out of my overactive imagination. An idea would pop into my head, and I would grab looseleaf paper, computer paper, a notepad-- pretty much whatever was closest-- and just start drawing. It was purely an expression of my creativity. I never really thought about whether I was good at it or not, I just loved getting the characters and scenes out of my head and onto the paper. It made them real and alive.

I'm definitely much more critical of my own drawings now, often comparing them to other art, judging them as good or bad, and feeling self-conscious about showing them to others. I don't have the same uninhibited, individual creativity that I had when I was little. I try harder to be original, and I often draw to see how detailed and realistic I can be, or to improve my technique. I think it's good that I challenge myself and strive for improvement. However, I like to flip through my binder of childhood drawings every once in a while as a reminder of why I love drawing in the first place. I can take classes, draw for other people, and maybe even try to sell something one day. But ultimately, I draw for myself. It is a creative outlet that I have always loved and always will. 

My three-year-old interpretation of nature (or "nacher")

Drawing Reflection - Alessandra Zhang

Drawing & Life

When I first think about my feeling for drawing, I recall the word “freedom”. I enjoy the feeling of throwing everything behind and pulling all my emotions and ideas onto the blank paper.  To me, drawing is more than creating lines and shades, but a unique way of representing myself. The following aspects are the most important things I learn and enjoy from drawing.

1.     I started to draw when I was 4. My grandfather is a painter and I still remembered he first taught me to draw a panda with black ink. I was amazed by his hands and fingers creating beautiful lines like streams flowing down the creek. Then the ink started to spread out a little bit around the edge of the lines and this was the most amazing moment I have ever seen as a young kid. Unsurprisingly, I started to draw under my grandfather and spent most of my childhood time doing Chinese calligraphy, line drawing and Chinese ink painting. These experiences play a very important role in my life, since it exposes me to one of the most important heritages of my Chinese culture. I leant how to use different amounts of water to deliver emotions and atmosphere in ink painting and this technique is very different from the Western and modern ways of drawing. This semester, with pencil and charcoal, we created realistic paintings with only black and white. While this reminds me of Chinese ink painting that I used to do when I was little, it is totally different yet. But I really enjoy using the black and white, either ink or pencil, to create things with multi-dimension. Attached is my favorite Chinese ink painting by Baishi Qi – it is a perfect combination of lines, shades, and smudges. With ink, it is very hard to produce edges, yet this drawing renders energy to the shrimps.

2.     I draw everyday in my diary and it is my way of writing a diary. I doodle a lot and I find it very fascinating to represent all my emotions and reflections with images and notations. Looking back to my diary, I sometimes will even giggle and laugh at the words and shapes. With images, there’s more story to tell and the doodles encompass a sensation that words can never deliver.

3.     Drawing creates me and polishes me from different facets. From Durer to Andy Warhol, I am fascinated about art history and my interest exposes me to a variety of masterpieces of arts and a plethora of knowledge from religion to modernism. Besides knowledge, drawing cultivates creativity and patience in me. On the blank paper, I have the chance to create everything I dare to imagine and this gives me even much more courage to be creative and risky in my daily life.

4.     Drawing creates a mind space for me to calm down and meditate. Every time when I open up my sketch book and turn on the music, I forget about everything. In psychology, there is a term called the zone. The zone is a state of being fully absorbed into the present - the here and now only. I believe that drawing is the zone for me. I get fully absorbed into every second of creating lines, shades and patterns. Sometimes I get lost at Duke since there are always so many things going on and so many pressure, but drawing always pull me back and direct me to the right path by instilling me the power of self-reflection and confidence. Either sitting in the studio or in my room in front of the drawing board, I start to forget about the irritation and become patient and calm. I really enjoy this emotion transformation that drawing brought to me and I think it is a very essential part of my life.

5.     When I grow up, I start to focus on comics and watercolor. The reason I love comics is that I think cartoon is a very fun way of combining my life, my ideas and a sense of humor together. I am passionate about watercolor since I think it is kind of similar to Chinese ink painting in terms of the use of water as a medium, yet I am more appealed to watercolor since it has a variety of colors. I love watercolor for its elegant feeling and its ability of arousing emotions.

I’m an anime fan and I used to draw all kinds of anime characters on scratch paper, notebooks, textbooks…basically anything made of paper. I feel myself immersed into my creations when I draw, and looking at the finished products is really fulfilling. 

Visual arts related fields, such as game design and animation production, have always been among my dream pathways, and this class is a good start for me. Drawing is fun, but it is a demanding task. I had to spend so much time dealing with lines, values and shades, and yet still sometimes things do not work out the way I want. The bristol boards look nothing special from a distance, but only after I start drawing on it do I realise how surprisingly huge it is. These struggles are worthwhile, however, because when I look back at my earlier work, I see how the many unexpected obstacles I encountered in this class have improved my skills, and better prepared me for my future artistic pursuits. 

My Thoughts on Drawing - Teng Hu

                       My Thoughts on Drawing
      I can't recall when did I start to be interested in drawing and art in general. Maybe start from I first look at Leonardo Davinci's drawing in elementary school. I was fascinated by the not only articulated beauty, but also precise, symmetry, and inspire me to realize there is a connection between art and engineering. The more artworks I look, the more I become interested in visual art. Learning to draw is also one of my dreams, and I think my last semester may be a good chance to explore this field.

     My idea of drawing involves from simple doodling to a different way of thinking. Since more I drew, I realize the most important thing is to train our eyes to see the shape and form first, and that special way of visual thinking inspires me a lot. Now looking back at DaVinci's work, I came to realize when that visual thinking intuition is strong enough like him, one can see the structure behind the shape, and thinking on shapes and forms, and I found that feeling really really cool. Although I'm not a detail-oriented person, I like drawings with discipline, especially Escher's work, he manages to fool people's perspective with the similarity between objects' shape, that really makes me want to learn the psychology behind visual arts.

   This class exposes me to many different concepts, perspectives of the world. One is negative space, especially use negative space to stir the imagination and bring the narrative to the drawing. I remembered ancient oriental arts heavily use negative space to describe concepts from Buddhism, some will even intentionally leave half the drawing blank. That connection between negative space and oriental philosophy (emptiness) I found very fascinating.

   This class has been a great journey to me. I'm looking forward to combining what I've learned into engineering and expand my career in future.

My Thoughts on Drawing

Every since I was little, I constantly drew. Although it sounds silly, throughout elementary school I would carry a notebook around with me, and just look at the clouds and draw the shapes of the clouds until the shape inspired me enough to turn into an image. I was obsessed with dragons since I was little; they were always a common theme in my drawings even today. By middle school, I kept a dream journal and would draw and even paint my dreams. In high school, I would draw all over my notebooks and the back of my sheet music during orchestra class. 

Ever since I came to Duke, I became a lot busier. As a biology major on the pre-medical track, I found I had much less time take a breath in the day and let out my creativity through drawing. I found I drew less and less. Taking this class at Duke has reminded me that drawing is such an important part of my life. I am graduating in two weeks, and then will be off on my gap year, and I will use this time to discover myself more. I have always considered an art career, but I have worked so hard on my science path that I am not sure what path to take. I love both paths, but given how demanding medical studies will be, I fear I will never have time in my life to devote to art if I choose that path. I have always wondered what I could be capable of if I just sat down and trained myself to let out my art, but I have never had time. In the free time I have, I want to take a break, but art unfortunately is not a break for me, it feels like work. 

I will make an effort to make art and creativity a part of my life, and this class has reinforced that. Last year, I got a tattoo of a dragon that I drew in high school. I am so proud of it, and it is a symbol for me that creativity and adventure are what I seek and strive for in life. Until then, I will work to find myself more this coming year as I enter the next phase of my life after Duke.

~Courtney Goodman