Sometimes to move forward, I have to go back. I am trying very hard to improve my drawing. Drawing has been my focus for the last six months. I believe art is a journey not a destination, and learning is how we move along the path.
Recently, I did a copy of a Tintoretto, and it had a profound effect on my thinking and my art. At first, I just copied this master work because it looked easy to me, and I wanted something to draw. It was mostly line, and the human figure of a man, and I like drawing people. So I went about copying this master's work, and I started to feel different. I had had this experience before when I copied a Van Gough. When I copied the Van Gough, I got angry. I couldn't believe it, but the strokes I had to make with my charcoal were bringing up anger in me. This seemed amazing. Since that time I have been studying the mind/body connection, and physical memory, and don't find the idea of the body/mind interaction all that strange any more. But this time I was copying the Tintoretto, and I found a real flow going on in my drawing. It felt almost like ice skating. The most amazing thing was when I went to life drawing. I found I suddenly started to see the model in curved line, just like the Tintoretto I had copied earlier in the week. I still can't get this mind shift out of my mind. Whenever I go to life drawing, I still see the curves in the model in a way to mimics Tintoretto's work.
I have been studying master works and have not had time to copy them, but even reading analysis of them (Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters by Robert Beverly Hale) has effected the way I approach a lot of subjects, and how I see them, and approach them to draw. I would not see the master strokes without a guide, but seeing the analysis, I can apply the techniques using the right side of my brain. By copying the masters, I think I must be engaging the left side of my brain, because the feelings I get when I am drawing or seeing changes based on these experiences.
A third way I have benefitted from studying the masters is that I carry these lessons to my painting and well as my drawing. Drawing is a great way to learning value, composition, and structure, and then painting adds the complexity of color. For me, painting is just drawing with a brush and color. They are not separate art elements, but rather just different stops on a single continuum.
Each human starts out in art in the beginning, and must learn himself or herself all he or she can during his or her lifetime. Studying the masters and what they have learned just speeds up my trip down the path of art.
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