|
Book and just how good it is
Well Gene, it is very hard to see just how good this book is from the link at Amazon. I can say this for a book on drawing: I would expect to see at least one drawing in the first 17 pages but it appears that the drawings most be somewhere else inside. I guess I will take your word that it is a good book but I will reserve my judgment until I have seen more of it.
As for the topic of this thread I must say, in a word YES, the masters could draw. And a lot better then most of us ever will. Just because some may have stylized parts of their drawings does not mean that they were bad drawings.
Part of drawing is the beauty of the line and the most beautiful line is not always the most exactingly accurate one. Also a lot of how well the masters could draw was due to the fact that they were not handicapped by the vision of the camera.
Yes, I said handicapped. Today most of us spend more time looking at images of the world in print and on TV and in Movies then we spend looking at them in life. And, as such, the world, when drawn according to the camera is accepted as real. The image of the camera is how we foolishly measure accuracy of drawing. And there is the mistake; the camera is not perfect people, it's images are full of distortion (and I am not even taking about color or value distortions).
The lens has a fixed focal length and point of view as well as being a cyclops. Unless you have lost the vision in one eye for some reason, the two eyes you were born with will always be better then the single lens of a camera. You just need to train your hand to record what your eyes see. That is what the masters spent years working on and that is why their drawings and paintings have life beyond just a accurate copy of a photo. I will end this post with my mantra on drawing. Draw from life and put life in your drawing.
|