Grade 9 Art - Day 9

We have been using art history lectures as a back drop to our experiential studies, but I wanted to take a minute to talk about drawing specifically (as we are working our way through the drawing unit!)

What is drawing?

It is more than just representing by line in black and white. It can be several things:

It is a personal expression of a physical or mental experience in terms of line and tone.
It is pictorial thinking with pencil on paper.
A technical method of creating the illusion of solid forms in two-dimensions.

Sometimes they have a finality – they are neither “of” or “for”, but are ultimately drawings.

What prompts the artist to draw?

Simple reasons:

to lay down a base illustration for painting, pastel, etc
to pass time
to convey simple thoughts
rapid notes of a thing seen in a flash

Complex reasons:

“to explore, untidily, the dark undergrowth of the mind.”
“to work out, with mathematical precision, the stresses and strains of a pictorial idea.”
“memories, in a visual shorthand, of the artist’s own devising”.