jayme del rosario | sketchblog

Blocking in is a great approach to drawing anything from the figure to a landscape or a still life. You break down the large shapes and work broadly paying attention to gesture, angles and distances. If you get the tilts and distances right, proportional problems shouldn’t haunt you and if you pay attention to perspective, you’re golden. It is a more linear approach to starting a painting or drawing — as opposed to mass drawing where the large masses are layed in very quickly.  There is a cursory block-in set-up with mass drawing but it is very brief.  Shapes are established very quickly and the block-in is used to set-up the gesture and general proportions of the subject.  An analysis of shapes and their individual axis play a larger role rather than the linear tilts of each form. But don’t be mistaken, they are one and the same and knowing how to think in linear mass can only be an advantage. It’s the difference between lifting with your back or learning how to lift with your legs, both will do the job but the former is likely to do more harm. Here’s a block-in of last week’s figure pose.

Figure Block-In

The side drawing was a critique from Michael Grimaldi where he analyzed the rhythm and movement of the structural forms making an excellent parallel to a previous drapery workshop which the full-time/core program students took part in last month at JCSA, aka Janus.  More on the block-in in a future post.

I’m busily preparing for the Janus Collaborative School of Art’s Open House Celebration.  If you’re in the city, head on over.  The studio in East Harlem, aka El Barrio.  It’ll be a blast.  Some of the founding instructors will be premiering never before seen artwork and pictures in progress.  Forget the wine, we’ll be celebrating the spring weather with some sangria.

Northern light exposure

When: Saturday, May 30th
Time: 3pm until…
Where: 508 E117th St, click here for Google map
Directions: Take the 6 train to 116th St and walk 4 blocks east (towards Third Ave) to Pleasant Avenue. Turn left, JCSA is a few steps from Pleasant Ave. on 117th St.
If driving, JCSA is 2 blocks from FDR Drive, exit 16. There is ample street parking.
Website:  www.januscollaborative.org

Milan born painter Pietro Annigoni studied and lived most of his life in Florence where he studied at the Accademia delle Belle Arti taking classes in painting, sculpture and engraving. Though he was popular for his evocative landscapes, he enjoyed great success as a portrait painter painting prominent figures such as Pope John XXIII, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Queen Elizabeth II.  

Annigoni’s style is greatly influenced by the great Old Masters of the Italian Renaissance though he learned the art of painting in tempera grassa (ie, “fatty tempera”) while studying under the Russian painter Nikolai Lokoff.  What makes the tempera paint fatty are particles of oil mixed in with the egg tempera. The oil allows the paint to have slightly more blending effects though the medium remains to follow the drying properties of pure tempera rather than oil paint.

I am not sure whether these portraits were painted in pure tempera grassa, pure oil paint or a mix of both mediums, regardless they are exquisite.  

Born in 1910 and being a realist painter at a time when realism and traditional painting was a dying art form, Annigoni signed the manifesto of Modern Realist Painters in 1947. The group consisted of 7 painters who were openly opposed to abstract art and other styles and movements of art in Italy at the time. Despite representational art’s fall from grace, Annigoni continued to produce work that bore the style of Italian Renaissance portraiture executed with technical bravado and enjoyed worldwide success in the face of modernism and post-modernism. Nelson Shanks of Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia and Michael John Angel of the Angel Academy in Florence were both Annigoni students.

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Images courtesy of Artron
Annigoni on Art Renewal, more images
Angel Academy of Art
Studio Incamminati

The tradition of drawing from memory has disappeared from art training despite its crucial role in developing the artist’s drawing skills, creativity and imagination.  One of my teachers, Jon deMartin, says you really find out how much knowledge you’re lacking when you try to draw the figure from memory. It’s a very humbling exercise. At the same time, you show yourself which areas you need to study more and which areas you have learned to integrate very well through the process of drawing from nature.  

No matter how many times you have drawn the figure from life, drawing the figure from memory remains a challenge.  The only way to reach the goal with greater ease is to continually practice drawing the figure from memory.  In Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses on Art he tells (I believe in Discourse IX) his students to redraw from memory figures that they had previously drawn in the life class. Continual practice in this exercise, he said, would soon enable the student to draw “tolerably correct” human figures “with as little effort of the mind as is required to trace with a pen the letters of the alphabet.” Leonardo da Vinci recommended artists should go over the forms and outlines they had studied that day before going to sleep at night.

In our portrait sketch class with Kate Lehman at JCSA, we were asked to paint the same portrait from memory and it was amazing how much the brain simplified things down to the most essential elements — at least this was my strategy that day.  I was more amazed at what I was able to remember, than what I didn’t remember.  Simplification and a broad approach proved to be a great strategy in recreating the portrait.  Now I am lucky enough to get my hands on an out-of-print book, The Training of the Memory in Art written by Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1847.  I am looking to improve my skills in memory drawing not only to aid drawing from the imagination, but to be able to develop compositions in the process of picture making.

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Links:
Jon deMartin
Kate Lehman

Books: 
Discourses on Art, Sir Joshua Reynolds (online version of 7 discourses, here)

Check out:
Another post on memory drawing via one of my favorite blogs, Gurney Journey.