November 5.
This week in life drawing I tried to push myself out of my dependence on line. I think about line a lot. How line helps us define a shape or an object, and how that object occupies and interacts with space. The contrast between line and surface fascinates me, and using line to define, accentuate, or occupy surface is an interesting idea. Perhaps it is for these reasons that I struggle so much not to define the figure with outlines. A drawing is unavoidably constructed of lines in some way, and I have a hard time ignoring that concept. I think what needs to happen in my drawing is to bring the lines across and inside of the figure. The figure occupies more space than what is communicated by a silhouette, or even an assembly of many silhouettes, and that has essentially been what I have created. This was never a problem when I had several values to work with, in a light/shadow based drawing. Amy's goal is for us to bring more to the audience than how light looks on a figure, though, which is a much different idea than the ideas of drawing instructors I've had in the past. "Draw what you see, not what you know!" has always been the instructions I have received. Of course, the only thing we are capable of seeing, in a very literal sense, is light or lack of light. To find edges of positive and negative shapes, has been my fallback from ignoring light's interaction with surface and simply finding edges is not adequate. My goal now is to learn more about the body and bring as much of that information to the page as possible.