The cats are from a Nature documentary, the skull is from Elliot Goldfinger's animal anatomy book. The rest of the animals are from life at the Wild Animal Park. I have some gouache landscape studies in there - the village is from a sweet photo I found online. Closing the set out, I've got a tonal ballpoint drawing I did of my friend Kin and a ballpoint of a tank. When I do my sketchbook work, I'm starting to sketch with pen almost exclusively because I'm trying to work on my lines and ability to commit to one accurate decision. I'll go back to pencils at some point, but right now I'm enjoying this.
This is a response to Kenton's questions under the comments of the Bargue foot study. I was going to post it to his Xanga, but I couldn't remember my password and I'm running out of time on this library computer. Besides, other people might think the thoughts are interesting:
You're right about sight size. The key is that the subject and drawing _appear_ (not actually are) the same size from the vantage point where you take your measurements. I made a mistake there.
About half of my paintings so far are gouache and the other half are oil. I just started experimenting with color in gouache. Up until the past few weeks, I just used it for black and white value studies. Initially, in many ways gouache is harder to handle than oil, but once you can control the beast, it's one of the fastest tools next to digital. I'm still working on it. Ron is an animal with the stuff.
As far as painting traditions, classical art (mostly in the European tradition) was taught in much different ways and with much more rigor in the past. although representational fine art is resurging in a big way. I really recommend looking at Juliet Aristides' drawing book when you get the chance. I think it can be found at B&N or Border's. But it explains what I'm doing with the sight size stuff.
It's very different from the sketching stuff I do, and Vilppu, etc.
The sight size stuff is all about accuracy, and if you're going to learn it, something with the subtlety, control and design that went into Bargue's drawing course is great to study. When I do one of those studies, I want it to look exactly like the original. It's a bit of a misnomer that copying others' art or even photos is bad. Tracing photos is even a great learning aid at certain stages. The only point where it becomes bad is when you rely on those things and you can't draw from life or do your own thing.
As a learning tool, I think we've shot ourselves in the foot by saying that imitation is bad. It's like trying to learn how to speak, but then being forced to come up with your own language.
All we really have to operate on as artists is our own visual experience of the world and the art that has been made before. When imitating is prohibited, what often happens is that people still end up imitating, but they aren't fully aware of what they're imitating or how to control it.
Granted, there are individual aspects that are important to art, and we should all develop our own voices. It's got to come from the heart. Sometimes people over-emphasize things like master studies. Emulating other artists has it's place, but it's as an eye tuning device. Part of developing your own voice. Even when we look at other artists we should try to look past their individual style and see the big picture principles they're using and how.
It's our understanding of the foundational stuff that's true of all art that lets us make comparisons and value judgements about the art we look at and what we eventually try to bring in to our own stuff. Culturally, for a long time we've had a problem with making any kind of a quantifiable judgment about art. Especially the state colleges and galleries have.
The entertainment marketplace has always demanded a certain level of foundational skill, and the Academy/Atelier standards for art are returning as demand rises for this sort of work in the fine art marketplace.
The art that it's easiest to make judgments about is representational fine art because it is either right or not in an academic setting. Geometric measurements are right or not. Colors or right or not. This kind of demand tunes the eye to truly see things as they are.
Outside of that framework, anything goes as long as it serves the purpose it was made for, but that becomes the main criteria. More subjective. I'll try and e-mail you later this week.
