Carrasco Studio

Drawing Lesson 6, The Secret Double Helix. Angles and Units

  Drawing Lesson 6.   Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

 
Chamboard double staircase     Leonardo DaVinci      

Spirals..and another image leading to an infinite journey, and a metaphor for  any search.  Remember, "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Ecco?....a spiraling novel, like a rose petal curved around rose petal.  And the Chambered Nautilus that my friend Theresa Cheek featured in her blog , http://artstheanswer.blogspot.com/2010/06/shell-game.html

              

  I especially like this sea creature as a metaphor because it always is connected by a thread of it's corporeal body to the first chamber it created... from the beginning this thread runs through each chamber to the last.....an excellent concept for the artist, who always brings his or her past experiences into the now....some events bumping and jostling to be expressed, some remaining in the dark and closed up forever.  It also is stellar example of Fibonacci geometry, but don't get me started.

At the end of this lesson, I challenged the class to copy  the first drawing in this blog that I thought MIGHT be by Leonardo DaVinci, and MIGHT be a design done by him for Francis 1st of France for the double stairway of Chambord, a castle Francis was building in the Loire valley.  To my delight, Ben Shimizu looked it up on his phone and I was right!  Please excuse my preening.

Keep up the effort in homework...you'll be repaid in spades!   Look at ballerina drawing...did you stare long enough to “see” the negative spaces?  Was it more difficult to draw organic angles and lines?  Can you find angles in organic forms relative to horizontal and vertical edges of the format?  How about basic units? (perhaps smaller increments in organic forms)   Discuss Chapter 8....Right brained? left brained=Relationships and ratios...accept the visual paradox of  foreshortening, more acute angles, more narrow or wider areas and shapes than we “know”...linear formal perspective needs to be taught in another class.  This, for me, is the hardest skill to teach, but once you get it, it becomes automatic.

Even Mantegna had to struggle with foreshortening....close but not quite!

2.  Look at the Hammershoie drawing.  Danish...serene, very little color in his paintings as well.   Mark off (LIGHTLY) the vertical divisions in the room...judge by distance from center or edge of paper format.. How far down on the right side of the paper is the corner of the floor and wall...mark with a dot.note how he measures  the angle of the  Pick your Basic Unit (top of door).  Measure space from door to corner.....mark with a dot in several places.  Then go to the door (vertical...top and bottom and mark with a dot where the corners of the open door end. (use your basic unit!)     Measure the angle of the top and the bottom of the door (and the basic unit) with a Horizontal read (don’t be fooled by the top of the basic unit...IT IS NOT HORIZONTAL!)  Keep checking with your basic unit and the vertical and horizontals,,,,work from large to small.

Here's another Hammershoi painting to look at...in color this time...just for general tastiness.  I do, do, love his subtle pallate.

3.  Actual open door drawing...from the hallway looking in.  Use your viewfinder, close one eye and look carefully before you start,,look at the negative spaces..  Don’t “poke” your measuring pencil into your invisible picture plane.   Choose a basic unit and make some measurements where you mark with dots...i.e. end of floor, top of door, etc. Check angles with the verticals and horizontals of the edges of your paper. Draw only what you see and check often.  Keep your head and view in the same space and at the same angle.  Keep your clear plastic picture plane with you to double check questionable areas.

4.  Draw a dutch iris in a bottle with both hands.  Relationships. Yes!  No words!

5.  Drawing  Stacks of books......Focus on a basic unit this time..choose a basic unit...(check with me)..and compare angles with edges of the format.  Can use ruler if you want.

6. Tell story of Francis 1st and how Da Vinci lived with him in his old age.  Legend says he died in the king’s arms.  I picked this off the web (see first drawing)...wanted an old drawing (artist dead, public domain) and looked at it....reminded me of the hidden stairway Francis has designed for Chambord.....his palace on the Loire....he was a notorious womanizer, and chastity among his court was observed mostly in it’s breach.  I look at this drawing, it looks like Leonardo’s drawings, and it looks like Francis 1’st spiral stairway...I can hear the whispers of lovers and the swish of skirts along the steps.
 

Assigment  Read chapter 9.   I challenge you, I throw down my glove...copy this drawing of the spiral stairway...pick the basic unit, check the angles and connect with the past...Da Vinci, Francis 1st and the lovers of long ago. Or, for the timid, draw the corner of your kitchen (blah) using the skills we practiced in class...checking angles with the vertical and the hotizontal edges of your paper, and choosing a basic unit to measure distances, lengths and relationships.

And here's another stairway by MC Escher to drive you crazy.

Conversation Sandwich

This all started with a conversation I had with my friend Eric.  He dropped by to visit and we talked about a number of things. He is fun because he is so quick and well read and doesn't get nervous about leaping from subject to subject.

When he got up to leave, I laughed and said we discussed the world like we were skipping pebbles across the lake....hitting just the surface of ideas before we sink the concept. 

Later I wrote Eric and said that it would be interesting to build a conversation like an edifice.  Since he can think in a more linear and rational manner than I, he could build the foundation and basic architecture of the building, while I contributed flying buttresses, gargoyles and decorative borders.

Years ago I read Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse and I was intrigued by the book's concept of communication.  In the story, men got together to have dialogues where they consciously shaped conversations into beautiful structures that grew increasingly complex and dazzling.  I read the book more than 30 years ago, but as I remember, when the group became very old, they created  a conversation  so arcane and metaphysical that they became one with the dialogue....disappeared into it.

It got me thinking about visual metaphors for conversation.  They are endless....rivers, trees, a Dagwood sandwich, schools of fish. Different types of lines coming out of people's mouths like the drawings of Saul Steinberg.  (When I taught junior high, they thought it was hilarious to use lines all smudged and chaotic coming out of people's mouths..."talking dirty," of course.)

My friend Julian came by a few days later, and Phil got me out in a lawn chair in the sun so I could talk and soak up a few rays. Julian stayed for about an hour and we discussed a wide range of subjects. Later, I thought our discussion could be interpreted by images of birds.....sparrows for everyday thoughts, wrens for the cheerful, house finches for the melodic , western tanagers for the beautiful, crows for bawdy talk , gulls for soaring thoughts and honking of Canadian geese for debating.  No eagles in this diagram.  Too severe and judgmental.