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In this series, artist Danny Galieote tackles a challenging topic that everyone eventually faces: how to find your personal voice as an artist. This first lesson will cover Danny’s influences on Looseness, Rhythm, and Appeal. He will discuss various Pontormo works as well as a variety of animation drawings that helped to shape his voice as an artist. At the end, Danny will assign an exercise to help you put the ideas he discussed into practice.
Materials
- Digital Tablet
- CarbOthello Pencil – Burnt Sienna
- Caran d’Ache Supracolor Soft Aquarelle Pencil – Scarlet
- General’s Kimberly Drawing Pencil – 6B
- Prismacolor Ebony Pencil
7 minutes into the pontormo analysis and I’m exhausted. I’m going to watch Mr Galieote’s series because I’m really interested in the over-all subject matter, as I feel lost in establishing/finding my own style. But he’s like “and look at this line here.” and “I love this here. How I can tell that the shoulder is working harder….and this curve here. I love this part and I love this part”.
It’s exhausting because I see these things as basic anatomy – not artistic brilliance. Like, that line curves that way because that’s a hip, and the model is seated in such a way that if that line wasn’t there, it would be a whole other issue. Yes, the figure is rendered beautifully, but I’m not getting the excitement over any particular line choices. Tricep, thigh, shoulder……
I know. I’m only 7 minutes in, but I saw the discussion button and wondered if anyone else had quickly been frustrated by how the lesson feels poorly improvised.
Only 7 minutes…
I hope this isn’t a waste of time….
7 minutes…..what do I know anyway? I don’t know anything. This is gonna be great.
7 minutes down. Back at it….I understand what you’re saying. My short response is: There are many great instructors and approaches at NMA and you have the ability to choose what meshes best for your style of learning and taste.
Here’s my full answer though, writing as an educator but also personally as an artist. There’s no one way to teach or to think about art so please take this in the spirit of how it was intended.
For me, I don’t think it’s obvious how the Old Masters and more recent masters have developed the language of drawing and painting. I think that’s why the best art we can produce today technically pales in comparison to what they were able to do.
I would just caution you that if their methods seem obvious, it is possible you’re missing something–not just nuance.
The masters are not just representing the figure and drawing anatomy, they are designing the figure and using an abstract and illusionary language to do it. The Old Masters could design masterpieces from imagination. The ideas of construction, gesture, value design, composition, and everything else that is precious to us as artists and which we use as our “bread and butter” have been learned, taught, and passed-on over generations and centuries and it can be acquired through analysis of these artists. Maybe we learned it through one instructor or class or book or another, but it’s an inherited cultural legacy.
The masters of different art periods had strengths and weaknesses relative to each other and it’s only by studying them that you can internalize that information, synthesize it with your own sensibilities and use it in your own work.
Personally, I also taught myself how to draw by studying the masters and it’s an exercise I never stopped and I encourage my students to do the same. There is a tradition of teaching this way that has shaped the work of many of our core instructors including my own mentors. Lorser Fietelson taught this way to his student Harry Carmean, who then taught to his students: Karl Gnass and Glenn Vilppu and Vernon Wilson who then taught Steve Huston.
This tradition of teaching art concepts by showing their mastery in the work of other artists, goes back through art history. This is how Rubens taught his students including Van Dyck (research the Rubens “Cantoor” to read more about this).
It’s a sort of “don’t take my word for it” kind of teaching approach and it allows instructors to show the fundamentals across styles and centuries and not only limited to their own style or approach, or ability. This was also a common teaching approach with instructors like Hale, Bridgman, Benton and many others. You improve by studying the best that ever lived. That’s the idea.
A great teacher can hopefully help you see what’s not obvious in that work, and ignite a love of the material and of that form of study in you.
But like everything in art, there is no one way to approach it and there’s no single way to learn. I wanted to explain my thinking on this course, because I am proud of it and I highly recommend it– but again you should gravitate to the teaching style speaks best to you.
I hope this was useful. Thanks for your feedback.
By the way, reading your response I actually think that maybe the title of this course could be more descriptive. I think we can work on that.
Also I think there are lessons that may be more what you were looking for when you started this course. Please check these out:
https://www.nma.art/videolessons/visual-style-and-your-personal-expression/
I’m really enjoying this course and the analysis. I’ve recently started to notice how animation drawings could help my anatomy and how they simplify classic concepts, so this was perfect.
The analysis can become slightly frustrating at times, but drawing with the instructor could really help you empathize with both him and the Pontormo sketches. I really enjoyed hearing him describe the drawings, I don’t think I would have noticed all of the stylistic choices compared to anatomy on my own.
Me encanta cada dibujo de Disney. Mi pelicula favorita siempre ha sido el príncipe de egipto, por ser tan dramatica, me ilusiona pensar que algun dia tal vez llege a elaborar alguna pelicula en 2d como las “antiguas”.
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