TRANSPARENCY
The transparency of shadows represented in draw- ings touches on a curious phenomenon of every- day human perception known in psychology as value constancy.16 It is best explained by a visual example of a folded piece of paper (Figure 5-44). If it is illuminated from one side, it seems lighter in value on that side than on the other, yet one tends to perceive it as uniform (constant) in value. The memory of past visual experiences is believed to be an important factor in this effect. One is conditioned by experience to recognize that a strong light source causes an object of uniform color to appear darker on the shadow side. Since a shadow cast the object often extends to neighboring sur- faces or nearby objects, the continuity of the shadow is a visual cue to the color constancy perceived in the object. This can be demonstrated by covering the cast shadow at the base of the folded paper in Figure 5-44. With the cast shadow covered, the folded paper appears to consist of two pieces, a gray and a white, instead of a single sheet of folded white paper.
In shadow modeling the transparency effect of shadow patterns (i.e., lightness constancy) depends on the consistency and continuity of those patterns in relation to the forms drawn. It is therefore im- portant to draw shadows as continuous patterns in order that they be perceived as transparencies on integral forms rather than as multicolored shapes. Without a sense of value constancy the naturalistic appearance of the form may be lost.
THE ARTIST'S POINT OF VIEW
Naturalism is associated with shadow modeling even more than with relief modeling, because in shadow modeling the artist functions primarily as an ob- server-attempting to capture tonal relationships as they appear at specific times and under specific lighting conditions. The momentary and ephemeral aspect of light is of paramount importance. In re- lief modeling, on the other hand, the values of light and dark are based on an imaginary, time- less light source. Such a close association with an imaginary, unchanging source of light suggests a pro- found philosophical difference between the two drawing methods.
The artist who adopts the shadow-modeling technique shares some of the same concerns as the photographer who takes pictures in available natural light, yet few people would mistake a photo- graph for a drawing! The difference between the drawing medium and the chemical-bromide sur- face of the photograph is usually apparent even in drawings reproduced photographically, such as those in this book. Unless the drawing is derived from a photograph, another factor distinguishes the photo- graphic process from the drawing process-human binocular vision. The human visual system, unlike most cameras, normally gathers visual informa- tion from at least two points in space. The slight shift of position that usually accompanies the draw- ing process permits many more points of view. Drawings made by direct observation of a subject are thus the result of a process that more spatial information about form than is possible with the standard camera, and this difference is usually reflected in the drawings even if shadow modeling is restricted to only a few tonal steps.
In a lithograph (Figure 5-45) by the German artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) shadow modeling yields an almost sculptural sense of form with the same four tonal steps used in the preceding exercise. The artist's masterful draftsmanship emphasizes the general structure of the head as illuminated by a low source of light, suggestive of a hearth. In- tended as a poster for a homecraft exhibition, the shadow modeling in the lithograph becomes part of the expressive content of the work. The special importance of the role of lighting in shadow modeling had attracted the attention of Leonardo centuries before: "Above all," he warned, "see that the figures you paint are broadly lighted and from above, that is to say all living persons that you paint; for you will see that all the people you meet out in the street are lighted from above, and you must know that if you saw your most intimate friend with a light (on his face) from below you would find it difficult to recognize him.”
Kathe Kollwitz's aims were obviously quite differ- ent from those of Leonardo. Her work reflects a deep concern with the social conditions of the working class. For this reason it was not important that her subjects be seen as if under an ideal light, nor was it necessary that the individual be easily recognized as a unique person. Of greater concern was general humanity of an entire class of people. Her philosophical and political views are thus inseparably connected with the formal means that she adopted in her work, just as Renaissance attitudes about individualism are related to the works of Leonardo. Such a range of expressive meanings demonstrates that shadow modeling is at vital modality of drawing, undeserving of the commonly appied label "academic."
The tonal simplification apparent in the Kollwitz work is carried further in a Self-portrait (Figure 5-46) by the German artist Emil Nolde (1867-1956), who was not only a compatriot of Kollwitz but was born in the same year. A master of the woodcut, a medium that dictates a bold black-and-white effect, Nolde's lithographic Self-portrait is highly graphic. He apparently used a flat-tipped brush dipped in un- diluted tusche (lithographic drawing ink), thus ensur- ing the intensely high contrast apparent in this work. His choice of instrument and medium necessarily reduced the amount of visual information con- tained in the drawn image, yet, as in the Kollwitz lithograph, a remarkable sense of form and struc- ture remain. For example, although one side of the hat represented in the Self-portrait is not delineated, the portion drawn suggests the entire form. Nolde's technique is not merely a simplification but a re- duction of form in which each brushstroke indicates the area drawn and also suggests others that are not. The economy of means inherent in this method makes it well worth exploring.
STUDY 20. BLACK-AND-WHITE SHADOW MODELING
Materials: 36"-x-24" newsprint pad easel or straight-back chair Masonite or plywood panel and clamps stand or small table india ink Japanese brush or flat-tipped, long bristle brush (#6 or #7) 200-watt floodlamp (optional)
Reference: model
Suggested time: 10 minutes
Several drawing media can be used for this study, including crayon, but liquid media seem ready-made for it. Like the liquid tusche used in lithographs, india ink can be brushed on undiluted. A flat-tipped bristle brush or a Japanese brush is a good carrier of the ink. It will last longer if you dip it in clear water before loading with the ink. Excess ink can be wiped off on a scrap of paper before you begin to draw.
The drawing procedure is basically the same as for the previous study: draw for shadow pattern. The black ink makes it possible to compress your descrip- tion of shadow into a single tone, a reduction that may require several attempts before you are satisfied with the results. This study requires only 10 minutes, however, so you should be able to complete several drawings in an hour.
A strong, directional light, such as that provided by a single large window or a 200-watt floodlight, is useful in creating clear shadow patterns on the model. These shadow patterns should be drawn as directly as possible, translating observed dark values into black and white. As you draw, the brush will re- quire replenishing from time to time; before dip- ping it in the ink again, however, you may wish to explore the possibilities of drybrush drawing. The stroke produced by the dry brush tends to be broken and often registers the texture of the paper. The generally ragged quality of this technique is often responsible for the halftone effects that occur in drawings with undiluted ink or lithographic tusche, some of which are present in Nolde's Self-portrait. If you are not familiar with the brush as a drawing instrument, you may wish to begin your drawing with a dry brush, as it is handled similarly to the more familiar crayon.
SUBTLE TONAL VALUES
You may eventually wish to model the figure by using fine degrees of intermediary tones. Very subtle ef- fects are possible with crayon by rubbing the paper to smear the marks. You can also use a small, cylin- drically shaped roll of paper (called a stump) that is made especially for this purpose. For the subtlest gradations of tone another drawing medium is sug- gested, stick charcoal. With this medium the stump is best used in combination with a chamois skin (a piece of soft leather) and a kneaded rubber eraser. The chamois is used to rub in broad areas of smooth tone; the kneaded eraser, to create lighter tone by lifting crayon granules from the paper. It is necessary to spray a completed charcoal drawing with a thin varnish fixative in order to fix the particles of charcoal permanently to the surface. Fixative is also useful for preserving the quality of crayon and pencil drawings, even though these media tend to be less subject to smearing than charcoal.
The art academy of the nineteenth century em- phasized naturalism of effect and taught shadow modeling as a technique for drawing the nude. Such studies, known as académies d'après nature, required a drawing medium capable of rendering delicate nuances of tone in order to create the desired effect of light and shade. Charcoal, inexpensive, flexible, and capable of rendering subtle values of tone, was most frequently used, but its very flexibility, which permitted easy erasure and correction, not infre- quently led to overworked drawings that were de- risively labeled "academic."
Charcoal shadow modeling was and is not suited to every artist's purpose. For the young American artist Thomas Eakins, however, it seemed tailor-made. A drawing by Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) provides a fine example of shadow modeling with charcoal (Figure 5-47). The artist has carefully translated his formal observations into shadow patterns that are drawn in distinct tonal steps. The tones range from pure black, used discretely within areas of dark gray. to the highest values of demitint, created by means of the stump. All patterns were apparently con- structed with line and integrated into the tonal configuration. Highlights appear to have been created by erasing within a light tone. Eakins' use of line is instructive though not immediately ap parent. Patterns of tone in the figure's right leg reveal fine broken lines that mark the boundary of the shadow area. The sharp angularity of the broken line suggests that careful angular analysis and measurement formed the basis for the remark- able accuracy of this life study, drawn while Eakins was a student in a French art academy. Although such structured accuracy is a quality sometimes identified more with academic discipline than with art, for Eakins it formed the basis of the intensely personal idiom of his mature work.
COLORISTIC AND FORMAL VALUES IN DRAWING
Up to this point modeling has been considered only in terms of describing form and its shadows, yet the draftsman often finds it necessary to deal with prob- lems of color in a subject. Kollwitz, in her lithograph for a poster (Figure 5-45), chose to stress form in one area and color values in another. The dress and hair of the figure, for example, are treated as flat shapes distinguishable only in terms of color areas, while the region of the face is modeled in almost sculptural form. If the same inconsistency occurred in the work of a lesser draftsman, it might appear as a glaring error, but here the contrast that it pro- vides seems to dramatize the subject. A greater inte- of color effects with modeled form was achieved by Eakins in his Academic study (Figure 5-47), in which he modeled the figure's hair within a generally darker tone. The same solution was arrived at by a present-day student (Figure 5-37). There are no fixed rules for combining modeling techniques with tones representing color areas: their appropri- ateness depends upon the purpose of the artist.
Although drawing is usually thought of as an art form in which color is absent or subordinate, many artists in the past felt no such limitation and neither should the draftsman of today. Colored drawing media permit a more direct way of transcribing colors from life, and if color is your primary inter- est, you may wish to extend your media to include colored crayons, chalks (pastels), colored pencils, and/or watercolors. Even tempera and oil paints can be considered as drawing media in this sense.
Some modern artists have preferred to mix media while drawing in color. Picasso, for example, used tempera, watercolor, and pencil in a single drawing (Figure 5-93). Such mixtures are possible with nearly all media that share the same solvent, in this case water. If you have not previously used colored media in drawing, however, a more cautious approach may be helpful. By restricting the number of colors in a drawing it is possible to obtain a surprisingly rich coloristic effect with a single medium. Sanguine (rusty-red), black, and white crayons, for example, used on a bluish-gray ground, are especially effective in modeling form. These colors, limited though they are, provide contrasts of warm and cool effects (ie., reddish and bluish tones), which can be used to model form just as contrasts of value are used in monochromatic drawing. Toned drawing papers are made in a variety of colors for this purpose and are available in sketchbook form. It is also possible to prepare a toned drawing ground on white paper by means of a watercolor or acrylic-paint wash.
Regardless of the means used to represent it, form rather than color is the element most commonly identified with drawing. If form is more interesting to you, you may wish to pursue it as an isolated factor by drawing from monochromatic sculptures or casts, in which color as a form-defining element is virtually absent. Relief sculptures or, if they are not available, casts of relief sculptures are of special interest to the draftsman who is also concerned with pictorial form, for sculptured reliefs share many of the qualities of painting. Both painting and relief sculpture usually function within a rectangular, planar format. Although relief sculpture physically modulates the pictorial surface, the surface modulations, like those represented in painting, are in part illusionistic, for the relief represents volumes in a relative rather than an absolute way. In a relief by the Italian sculptor Jacopo della Quercia (1374/5-1438) entitled The Creation of Adam (Figure 5-48) the fig- ure of Adam does not physically rise from the surface to form fully rounded features of the body, as in free- standing sculpture, but rather protrudes only to the degree necessary to give the effect of rounded forms.
Another illusionistic spatial device common to both relief sculpture and painting is that of overlapping form (see chapter 1). A clear example of overlapping form is seen in the della Quercia panel, in which the head of the figure of God, by interrupting the tri- angular form of a halo, appears to be in front of it. Such spatial relationships as overlapping form and the relative representation of volumes are most apparent if the reliefs are illuminated, as they often are, by a directional light source. Under such lighting conditions the tonal values observed on the relief are a remarkably clear function of form (Figures 5-48 and 5-49). The highest values occur on the leading edges of planes that face the direction of the light source. Here a clear separation of values occurs between the darker tones of the adjoining plane. Like a line, the separation corresponds to a discontinuity of surface in the sculpture. The darkest values occur in shadow areas in which the surface turns sharply away from the light, resulting in a value contrast of dark and middle tones. Tonal steps of this kind help to establish a pictorial figure-ground relationship and lend them- selves to straightforward translation into shadow modeling.
The French artist Nicolas Poussin (1593-1665) accomplished such a translation in his drawing of an ancient relief found on the Arch of Titus (Figures 5-49 and 5-50). Using line to establish the contours of the relief, he laid in transparent washes to model shadow tones. In some later drawings such as The Triumph of Galatea (Figure 5-51) he reduced the number of tones to obtain a bolder effect. Many leading edges represented in this drawing are not separated from the background by tones but rather by faint contour lines drawn with chalk. Despite this tonal abbreviation the drawing retains the qualities of values and form that are peculiar to relief sculpture.
Relief sculpture as well as sculpture in-the-round were commonly available in art schools of the past in the form of plaster casts, which, like the original sculptures, enabled students to study the human form without the sometimes confusing elements of color and movement (Figure 5-52). Casts also provided a means of acquainting young art students with the classical-sculpture tradition of Rome and Greece. For both reasons drawing from the cast was an important feature of art instruction in western Europe from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, especially in France. Only after considerable study with casts, often of different parts of the body (such as the casts of heads in Figure 5-52), was the student ad- mitted to life classes in the art academy,20 The un- broken tradition of such instruction is seen in the student work of Picasso (Figure 5-53). Today, however, casts have fallen into disuse as a means of study, though many can still be found in art schools. This is perhaps to be regretted, for the cast can ease the transition for the beginning student from basic draw- ing problems to the complexities of the human form.
LINE AND MODELING
A plaster cast can be used to demonstrate yet another instrument of modeling-line. Although line is per- haps better known for its capacity to represent form in terms of edges and discontinuities, it is also capable of defining the continuous aspect of form and can therefore be used for modeling. By pro- jecting a thin beam of light on the model or on a cast (Figure 5-54) it is possible to see contour lines over the entire surface of the form instead of the more familiar contours normally perceived along edges and other surface discontinuities.21 Ordinarily, of course, surface contours are not visible on the human form, and it would be difficult to draw them with such a projected light on the model. A similar effect can be achieved, however, with the draped model.
STUDY 21. DRAWING CONTOURS OF FABRIC PATTERNS
Materials: 8 1/2"-x-12" or larger bound sketchbook of smooth bond paper india-ink drawing pen (2.5 Castell TG or 0.5mm Mars Staedler or Rapidograph).
Reference: model draped in striped material
Suggested time: 20-30 minutes
A striped pair of overalls or a bathrobe (Figure 5-55 will provide the necessary visual pattern for this study Because the pattern is in the cloth and changes as the cloth shifts, the study is best completed in one session, with the model holding a sitting pose. The drawing session need not exceed 20 or 30 minutes.
With the model posing in the striped clothing, you may begin by making a preliminary contour drawing in pen-and-ink. When the contour drawing is estab- lished to your satisfaction, draw one by one the un- dulating contours that appear on the cloth. Many such contours reflect the form of the body beneath; others result from folds in the cloth. Together they can com- municate a sense of surface relief similar to modeling. The optical excitement of the striped pattern and its ability to describe volume seem to have intrigued the French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), who exploited the pattern's special qualities in a brilliant series of drawings of women in striped gowns (Figure 5-56).
Drawing forms covered by striped material is a helpful introduction to the construction of surface relief with line. The next step is to draw imaginary lines of the same character-a true form of modeling. A figure clothed in unpatterned material can be modeled with line strokes that follow the form in a fashion similar to the stripes in Figure 5-55. An in- stance of this use of is observed in Nether- landish drawing (Figure 5-57), in which short strokes describe boldly simplified cloth-fold structures remi- niscent of Gothic woodcarving. The artist created the effect of receding form by increasing the density of the line strokes, causing correspondingly deeper values and richer textures in the valleys of folds and along the sides of the upper figure. Modeling technique aside, the drawing represents a superb achievement in linking two figures together in a single compos tion by means of the rhythmic patterns of the folds.
CROSS-SECTION CONTOURS
The surface contours projected on the plaster cast shown in Figure 5-54, though similar in some ways to those in the Watteau and the Netherlandish draw- ings (Figures 5-56 and 5-57), are far more system- atic and therefore more revealing of the way in which such contours function. The projected con- tours represent true cross sections (slices) resulting from the intersection of the solid form of the cast by parallel vertical planes of light. If the cast in Figure 5-54 were viewed from the same angle as the direction of the light, the projected lines would appear straight and vertical without any suggestion of the relief form of the head. Seen from the view in the photograph, however, they convey a strong sense of the cast's form. Other angles of intersection are equally effec- tive in communicating form (Figures 5-58 and 5-59). Leonardo experimented with this principle in an anatomical study of the legs (Figure 5-60). He drew imaginary segments of two legs, revealing total cross sections, represented as ovals, that give a graphic idea of the rounded form of the leg at various heights. The same cross sections in the leg drawn on the right remain flat and devoid of relief, however, as they are based on planes parallel to the line of sight. The power of the cross-section contour to suggest relief and volume in a drawing or in any two- dimensional thus depends on the apparent angle (orientation) of the cross-section plane with respect to the surface plane of the draw- ing. By experimenting with imaginary cross sections you can discover which orientation best describes form in your drawings.
