Drawing is the heart and soul of art. If the drawing is strong, you have to work hard to screw up a painting. If the drawing is weak, you have to work hard to just produce mediocrity.
I’ve gone through periods during which I did more drawing than painting, especially when I was young and painting supplies were sometimes beyond my modest budget. These days, most of my drawings are in preparation for paintings.
Here’s a drawing that was done for the joy of drawing. It isn’t a study for a painting. It’s charcoal and chalk on a toned paper. The paper is really nice with a deep rich texture.
When I start a drawing, I loosely sketch until I have the figure or tableaux positioned where I want it. The initial sketching is loose and flowing. Then, I define the touchstone. The touchstone is a form or a relationship between several forms (usually two) that defines the scale and proportions used throughout. Once the touchstone–the key–is established, the rest flows easily.
In this drawing of the bathing girl, you can see where I positioned her right hand during the initial sketching before moving it into its final position. The touchstone in this drawing is her left breast and left arm and the relationship between them (the negative space; I am always conscious of the negative space).
I have always drawn using parallel lines–hatching. This was a reinforced by one of my early teachers, Robert Smith, who taught his apprentices this method. You can see it in the drawing of the bathing girl. For example, the light area where the water meets the bank is a series of vertical lines (hatchings) arranged in a horizontal strip.
Hatching and cross-hatching were the foundation of French Academic drawing training. Beginning students were tasked with copying engravings of simple forms such as ears, noses, and hands. Students were instructed to mimic the parallel lines and hatchings exhibited in the engravings. In addition to training the eye, a good thing in itself, the practice helps students appreciate the formal and abstract (small ‘a’) nature of drawing.
Parallel lines and hatchings are capable of the most astonishing realism (small ‘r’), as anyone who has examined the engraving on a US banknote can attest. Here is a 19th Century French Academic sanguine drawing that uses the standard technique of parallel lines and hatchings.
Sanguine is chalk or clay containing some form of iron oxide. Sanguine is still widely used but it’s not as popular as it once was.