After the first week of this project, I would say that I have learned some valuable lessons about MC Escher and drawing as a whole. Since I decided to devote some of my time to studying MC Escher, I looked through a lot of his drawings. As I said in my previous post, I noticed that there a few objects or styles that occured in a number of his pieces, such as buildings and architecture, and patterns that repeat themselves. After reading a biography of Escher, I learned that he was very intrigued by the regular division of a plane. This term describes the division a canvas, which would be the plane, into different shapes, which are designed to fit together so that there is no, as one might say, negative space. Since showing examples is usually helpful, here is one of his tessellations, which holds an appropriate title-- Regular Division of the Plane III:
As Escher was thoroughly interested in this sort of art, he created many different tessellations, taking inspiration from Alhambra Palace in Spain. This Islamic palace, over six centuries old, is filled with walls that are decorated by repeating patterns of different shapes, such as the one pictured here:
The curving shapes created by the colors fit into the the identical curving shapes that are white. The perfection of this design reflects the thorough planning that went into it, just as this is seen in MC Escher’s work, such as Regular Division of the Plane. When reading his biography, I noticed that this keen interest in geometric designs was not very surprising, given the fact that geometry was really the only subject that MC Escher excelled in during his rather unsuccessful career as a student. This shows to me that focusing on your interests and strengths is very important, because those skills set you apart from the rest of the world and allow you to find success in your own way.
Anyway, although I did enjoy his tessellations, I never got bored of looking at Drawing Hands. I’m not sure about other aspiring artists, but I always found drawing the human body to be very challenging, especially more specific parts such as hands. In this piece, Escher provided a prime example of an anatomically correct hand that looked like it belonged in a photograph, instead of a lithograph print. I decided that I wanted to work on drawing hands so that I could try to emulate MC Escher’s style better. So, I started drawing. This is one of the pages I used for practicing:
I found a reference image of a hand, and tried to distinguish the general shape and positions of shadows. After four attempts, I felt that the last hand looked the most like a real hand, which is number 4. I learned from this exercise that I was continually making the same mistake of drawing the little finger at an angle that would only have made sense if you had just jammed it between a car door. The solution to this, which paid special attention to in the last attempt, was the planning. Drawing guidelines proved a good way to make sure the drawing would turn out alright at the very least.
This next image is another one of the pages I used to practice. During this session, I decided to explore some different poses instead of the simple position I used for the previous page. As you can see, I started to focus particularly on a hand holding a pencil, since, as you can imagine, this is the pose in Drawing Hands. When I analyzed this, I saw that some hands stood out as looking better than others. I determined the reason for this to be because of my patience. I have always drawn a lot throughout my life, but since I do it for the sole reason of it being fun, I was never really concerned with taking my time. I have now realized through this process, that taking my time results in something that just looks so much better, which brings me to my next point.
As a sort of tribute to MC Escher, I decided to make a drawing that combined what I had learned with Escher’s work. So, this is what I came up with:
I think it would be safe to say that this is probably the best hand out of all of the ones I drew. Though it is not the exact position of the hands in MC Escher’s drawing, I tried to incorporate elements from both Drawing Hands and Relativity, which I mentioned in my previous post. Overall, I think this piece has really changed my idea of what I am capable of, as long as I keep in mind the three ideas:
Planning (Using reference, and drawing guidelines)
Patience (Not rushing, making sure it looks the best it can look)
Persistence (Not giving up, repeating a process until it comes easily)
I guess I’ll get back to drawing now.
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It is interesting to read the Escher took inspiration from Muslim architecture; I was beginning to compare his tessellations more and more to the geometric patterns that are common in Muslim buildings.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I'm not an aspiring artist or anything, but I also find the human body and, by extension, natural shapes more interesting to draw. They have fewer straight lines and more contours than anything geometric, so they pose more of a challenge.
I have to say, your hand drawings are excellent. Keep on doing the skill progression shots; they really show how you improve.
Keep it up!
At first when I heard you were doing art for your project I thought: "Why is he doing that, he's already so good at art and drawing things!" Now that I see all this hard work you're doing, all this progress you've been making, and all this reading you've been doing I think you have a lot of potential to make this a great project and make everybody even more jealous of your skills. I liked how you had the picture of the 4 hands you drew, I could even see the progression in just one post. Progression within progression, aka progreception (no, it's not a word). :) Keep going and I'm sure you'll end up with a great end product.
ReplyDeleteGreat work, Walker. Your hands are really progessing well. I definitely see the Escher-esque influence. I can't wait to see the other artists in your work, especially Katsushika Hokusai. He's quite different from the abstract metaphysical style of Dali and Escher. Also, are you left handed or right handed? You've drawn both, so I have no idea how you're holding a pencil.
ReplyDeleteFirst off I want to say that that final drawling is awesome and looks really well done and developed. I, like you, really like work like that of Escher because I like something that I can look at and keep interested, and with something like his work you can keep looking and seeing something new, or just wonder how he ended up doing it, as is with the tessellations. On the other hand I also like things like Relativity that just confuses the mind because it keeps you thinking and confused, and you do not know what to think. I can also see a major progression on the hands you made and have two suggestions. One keep it nice and clean, the hand doesn't need to be fully extended it can be somewhat tight. Also, don't be afraid to do things thinking they will look bad, you can always erase. What I mean is your fingers, especially your thumbs, often look too small. Sometimes the mind has preconceived notions of what something should be but you need to go against that and do something different sometimes.
ReplyDelete