Since I was having trouble figuring out what to write for my posts, I put a post on one of the socials asking what people might like to read if they were reading and artist’s blog. I got one response. At least I got a response. The person suggested I look at DaVinci’s notebooks. Ok. Why not, right? So I made a trip to the bookstore to pick up a copy. We’re going to try to ignore that I left with 4 books and 2 magazines for now. One of the books may come up later so…
I am an artist. Being an artist does not require having a formal background in art, or a degree in art, or even a bit of art history. I am however at least a bit aware of history. While I admire the Fauvist movement, I’m not a big fan of the look. I like some impressionists, just not the ones that seem to be best known for it, Caillebote and Rousseau come to mind as favorites. I also like Bruegel and I appreciate the starkness of the Bauhaus movement and the technique and mind bending art of Escher. One of the things I like least when it comes to art, art history, and instruction is the idea that someone who is not the artist can ‘interpret’ what was meant by the use of a particular blue or brush stroke or whatever. If the artist didn’t leave notes then how do you actually know? I’m going to stay off my irritable soapbox on this, trust me I have strong opinions on it. And they were a factor in my youthful choices regarding school and art. Moving on.
The thing about the DaVinci notebooks is that he did just that. He wrote notes about what he thought about creating art, and how one should learn and master art, and what makes a real artist, and he wrote notes about his art. The Vitruvius Man. His notes discuss the proportions of the different body parts as compared to the body itself. It is interesting. And particularly since I draw people in motion. However, as I read some of his other notes, I couldn’t help but hear the same ‘authority’ that seems to come from critics and scholars and not so much from artists. Maybe. Maybe for those who teach art that is a natural way to explain something or how to approach something. And I’ve been fortunate enough not to come under such tutelage. It would not have gone well.
Hopefully, needless to say, that is not my style at all. I can tell you what I observe and what works for me. I don’t know if it’s ‘right’ because I believe that if it works for you, or gets the effect you want then who am I to judge. There are ‘rules’ for perspective, and proportions and color mixing and even in oil painting for fat over lean, and these things are still just guidelines. Yes, the human body is generally considered to be so many heads high, and hand is generally a certain size as compared to the face. However, those are still guidelines. If you follow those rules you get a perfectly proportioned human. If you are depicting a specific human or a human in motion with foreshortening, these ‘rules’ might not apply. And even though the fat over lean is a practical rule, if you are looking for the effect that the opposite creates, well then, it’s still just a guideline.
It has taken me a long time to reconcile this with regards to some of my own art. It tends to set my freewheeling artistic side against my more pragmatic and structured or disciplined side, which usually wins out. I was comfortable with pencil because, it’s a pencil, how can there be rules of using a pencil. I mean there are people that have particular ways they use it and maybe even some that think it should be held a certain way, but since I can write with a pencil it didn’t really occur to me that it mattered how I held my pencil when drawing. Watercolors. That’s a different story.
I finally came to the conclusion that I abuse watercolors. And I’m good with that. I think I’ve written before that I don’t typically do delicate watercolor paintings. My colors are usually bold and saturated. My taekwondo paintings may be the exception to this, and yes, I did use some watercolor technique so I might actually be a watercolor artist. Wait, what? I fought the idea of being a watercolor artist for so long because I didn’t like the delicate, often washed out, colors that I associated with watercolor. And then I finally, saw some watercolors in a museum that were saturated, and I finally found a way to describe some of my approach to painting with watercolors, I abuse them.
I’ve tried oil paints, and I’m thinking about trying them again. The one ‘rule’ I will be trying to abide by is the fat over lean because of the practicalities of the rule. And beyond that, I have serious expectations that whatever I do with the oil paints, I won’t be doing something ‘right’ because, how many versions of ‘right’ are out there. Is Van der Meer right, or van Gogh, or Monet, or Rousseau, or Caillebotte, or Da Vinci?
All of this to say, that while I appreciate the suggestion to reference Da Vinci’s notebooks for what to write about, that’s not my style. I just don’t see myself in that role, as the ‘authority’ on what is right or wrong or the only way in art. I’ll share what I do, or try, and how I feel about the results just to share, because hopefully it’s interesting to someone. Beyond that, I’m just an artist rambling about what I’m working on and hoping someone finds it worth the read.
Cheers.