Figure Drawing Peter Jenny
Princeton Architectural Press 路 New York
Learning to See
If you’ve ever wanted to learn to draw, or to draw better, the Learning to See series offers a mix of inspiration, encouragement, and easy-to-complete exercises that will have you filling the pages of your sketchbook more confidently in short order.
Introduction
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Mirror
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Recollect
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Hold
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Doodle
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Write
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Letter
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Form
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Surprise
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Vary
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Skeletonize
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Build
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Miniaturize
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Construct
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Surround
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Silhouette
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Fragment
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Uncover
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Imply
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Develop
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Move
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Animate
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Model
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Notes
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Introduction Voids Figure Drawing suggests, conceals, and abstracts, and it remains intentionally metaphorical in the representation of the human body.
Pure space When I was young, I was lucky enough to have had a teacher who allowed the class, once we had finished our written work, to fill the remaining margins of the paper—regardless of content—with doodles. Without even being aware of it, we developed our own doodling
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culture. Creativity was not important to my teacher; he simply wanted to be economical about the scarce paper supply. This gave us all the more freedom to express ourselves without restraint. Thus self-expression more frequently found its way onto the margins of the paper than within our essays. Not surprisingly, we finished our essays faster and faster, while the margins—our canvas—became larger and larger. The drawings quietly conquered ever more territory on our papers. Even in math a parallel world grew around the numbers, to the dismay of the school inspector, who did not know how to evaluate these drawings.
Gesturing It is easy to draw figures in the air with your hands. Even when done casually, the gestures illustrate something and are drawings just as much as anything captured on paper. The expression of a drawing begins with the body. Gesture and figurative drawing are closely tied
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and follow one another, but the distinction between them can be erased if you are willing to expand your understanding of drawing. A drawing can be more easily expressed on paper if you have first drawn it with your hands in the air or your feet in the sand.
The archetypal drawing Early cave drawings are simplistic, but the range of possible interpretations—dependent on the observer—is incredibly diverse. The search for meaning often follows the inclinations and the experiences of the individual interpreters. The vague nature of the images allows for subjective understanding. Those who made the drawings—long ago, under wholly different circumstances—reported on their lives with what we view as imprecision, which permits us, as outside observers, to call on our own experiences as we engage with their messages. The drawings themselves speak: they don’t attempt to persuade us, but they are curious and thirst
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for eager eyes that will form their own thoughts. Those who doodle cultivate, above all else, a meaningful monologue. The resulting sketches are ends unto themselves, not necessarily completed in order to learn something from them. (Just as monologues are not held to increase one’s linguistic abilities.) When speaking, making, or observing, people access their trove of experiences, where thoughts slumber, waiting to be awakened. What jumps out at us is our ability to communicate, and to interpret those communications, in a variety of ways.
Imagination Figurative drawings may at first strike us as mysterious, which can quickly make us take a skeptical stance toward them. Imagine a silk veil covering an object that forces us to guess at the obscured form rather than revealing it. We only need to shift our
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perception of a drawing’s ambiguity to want to see more in it, to experience it as something inspiring. Fortunately, our eyes cannot see everything—they always need the help of our imagination. Start a sketch and then put it to the side. In it, imply things rather than rendering them completely, and soon you can’t help but use your fantasy in order to interpret them. That’s why every person has imagination: perception could not occur without it. There are wonderful drawings by people who are not skilled artists. Those images especially appeal to our imagination, because they themselves are the result of it.
Naïveté Does it still make sense today, in our digital age, to take a pencil and draw little figures on a piece of paper? Is it pure naïveté that drives this pastime? Are artistic media (that don’t pretend to be art) still justifiable in the age of the Internet? There is no scientific
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answer, but one with three letters will suffice: YES. Drawing can, among other things, make us play, laugh, and fantasize. You can pass the time, and even improve your drawing skills, while exploring the language of images. Does not all learning—even at school—involve making things apparent? Images have always served to give meaning to the visible and to help us understand our surroundings. Drawings, even those made by children, make it easier to understand what, for example, a worm is, just as they can help us develop a concept of the world. Drawing something can be like dreaming while awake; as with dreams, we accept unreliable information in drawings as an inescapable part of the process. Trompe l’oeil is an optical illusion that shows objects in realistic detail and leads us to forget that what we see is an illusion. In drawings, the idea of reality is just as loose as it was in child’s play. This emphasizes the value of images that allow for various interpretations. It was
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Napoleon Bonaparte who said, “One must first speak to the eyes.” It appears that he may have understood the importance of the unseen beneath the seen.
“Correct” drawing? If you own a dictionary, you can look up the correct spelling of words. If you hire a lawyer, you can expect the proper interpretation and application of the law. But even if you have a textbook of drawing techniques, you are still allowed to make mistakes—breaking rules and trying unexpected things are part of the creative process. Allowing yourself to see things differently is essential for experiencing the greatest number of ways of perceiving. “All that is right and fair” acknowledges possible deviations from conventions but is unsettled by them. Correct drawing is a phrase that doesn’t exist because the word drawing itself is sufficient—the senses are engaged every time you draw, even when you are just doodling. The artist Alberto
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Giacometti possessed great skill and could do what only a few others can: create masterful depictions of the essence of man. But such expertise shouldn’t intimidate us and keep us from trying. Even if genius is likely never to arrive, you will still benefit from what drawing entails: endless experimentation, revisions, and questioning. As they say, an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory.
You need only the desire? “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” This aphorism appears to be true only in cases where the way does not seem unattainable. The way will seem too long and far away if we see making art as the goal rather than as an experience. Experimenting with modes of representation must become habitual, and it will show that nothing in drawing is permanent. Still, don’t be too eager to reject ideas—you can look at discarded versions as part of a repository of memories. Creation and rejection are two sides
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of the same coin, but sometimes rejection comes too soon. Even drawings that you’ve thrown out leave a trace in the retina and can reappear when the pencil seeks new forms, influencing it accordingly. Drawings have ancestors; collecting them should be just as important as the safekeeping of those images that we come to cherish.
Beauty The Swiss-German author Peter Bichsel writes, “In the eighteenth century a man from Bern, Albrecht von Haller, discovered the Alps for the world. He wrote a wonderful poem, ‘The Alps,’ that was read with great fascination by the educated of the time. He opened their eyes, and from then on the Alps were beautiful.” (Of course images have also always helped to reveal beauty.) We can follow Albrecht von Haller’s lead (if not with poetry) by writing a few words to accompany our sketches. We can describe what we find beautiful and note this
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either on the back of the paper or within the drawing. Even a few words can easily affect the meaning of a drawing; the many possible interpretations of any sketch encourage this. These comments should not be explanatory texts but the coming together of words and image. These two types of notes combine to form new content without imitating either of the originals. Sometimes we see with words; other times, with images. Eyes do not only follow the visible, and thoughts do not only consider behavior—together they declare: “I don’t know what other people see, but this has something to do with me and is therefore no longer without name.”
On their own . . . A truly curious person doesn’t chase after every new trend. Inquisitive people try new things on their own, uncover something on their own, consume on their own, read on their own. Curiosity helps us understand better what we
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acquire. Is fantasy also something that can be acquired? Many people believe that you are born with imagination and that “you’ve either got it or you don’t.” No one really wants to believe that imagination can also be borrowed. But who hasn’t borrowed a bit of inspiration here or there? And when the borrower interprets an idea and changes it, the adapted idea is then available for someone else to use. Choosing from the abundance of sources available requires decision making, and the vast supply of potential points of inspiration makes it impossible to critically investigate each one. It is, as a result, quite understandable that given the choice between adopting or rejecting, action or inaction, many choose the latter. Those who do nothing, however, have time—perhaps just enough time to engage in an activity that has no other reward than self-satisfaction: drawing. Most people don’t know how many of the things they use function but are still dependent upon them. In drawing we uncover little parts of
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a whole without being able to provide an exact image of it. Figure sketches are not images of specific people—Uncle Tom or Aunt Susie, for example—showing us what they look like, but they are representations that reveal something specific about those people. They are visions that do not depict anything in particular but can succeed as drawings. They don’t want to be anything more than drawings—your very own drawings.
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40 min., one sheet of 8.5 Ă— 11 paper
Mirror Although people are rarely symmetrical, it is easy to identify figures in images that are mirrored. Make a series of blotches. Place the edge of a mirror perpendicular to the black, amorphous spots. Turn and move the mirror’s edge to create various figures. Just observe them at first. Next, draw half of a figure with ink; fold the paper while the ink is still wet to double the drawing.
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