When there is creative uncertainty, there is always the self portrait
When there is creative uncertainty, there is always the self portrait
"As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art." -Albrecht Durer
Greetings Everybody!,
In this post, I thought I’d share and discuss this self portrait drawing I worked on a while back. The other day I thought I’d take a little break from painting and do some drawing. When delving into a lifelong pursuit of painting, it is all too common of a problem to neglect drawing and have your core skills become overtaken with weeds and rust so to speak. You can never seem to draw too much.
At first my intention was to see how quickly and accurately I could have achieved a likeness while keeping the idea of simplicity in mind, but once I saw how I was becoming confident in the progress of the block in, I decided to push it further.
With this particular drawing I wanted to really focus on unifying the core shadows and edgework, as I usually have a bad habit of over modeling and wanting to turn form everywhere!
Using this Ingres painting as an example, I wanted to point out the practice and emphasis in keeping very little detail in the lights.
In fact, you can see this approach continually practiced throughout much of his work. The lights and shadows are grouped together and read harmoniously all the way down the painting. You can see how he paid special attention in extending the mid tones away from the core shadow. This is the kind of effect I wanted to achieve with this self portrait.
(Male Torso, 1800 - Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres)
I find that while it is important to preserve your lights, you still want to extend your mid tones. The danger I find here is that the more you extend your midtones, the greater the risk you run in breaking up those forms. What is beautiful in preserving your lights and keeping them connected is that it aids the eye in keeping it in motion. When you use to many values in describing a form where it shouldn’t be, it tends to stop the eye dead in its tracks. Once again, the principle of simplification is key here.
Please feel free to let me know what you think?
Lights and midtones.... Yes, indeed, I think it is important to preserve some stark definitions to achieve that balance.
Hello @jameszenartist, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!