Edwards Betty. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

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Two additional self-portraits by

instructor Brian Bomeisler. Note

how they differ one from another.

You will find that your self-

portraits will differ, reflecting the

mood, feeling, and surroundings of

each sitting. Remember, drawing is

not photography.

A beautiful self-portrait in

light/shadow by instructor Grace

Kennedy.

226

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

A three-quarter self-portrait by

student Mauro Imamoto. The

composition is especially fine.

THE VALUE OF LOGICAL LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

227

Drawing

on the Beauty

of Color

"No one knows how far back in time

the human passion for color

evolved, but... its transmigration

from one culture to another can be

traced from archaeological frag-

ments as old as recorded history."

— Enid Verity

Color Observed, 1980

Miss Helen Keller, who was both

blind and deaf, writes of color:

"I understand how scarlet can dif-

fer from crimson because I know

that the smell of an orange is not

the smell of a grapefruit... With-

out color or its equivalent, life to

me would be dark, barren, a vast

blackness.... Therefore, I habitu-

ally think of things as colored and

resonant. Habit accounts for part.

The soul sense accounts for

another part. The brain with its

five-sensed construction asserts its

right and accounts for the rest.

The unity of the world demands

that color be kept in it whether I

have cognizance of it or not.

Rather than be shut out, I take part

in it by discussing it, happy in the

happiness of those near me who

gaze at the lovely hues of the sun-

set or the rainbow."

— Helen Keller

The World I Live In, 1908

N AN AGE LIKE OURS, color is not the luxury it was in past

centuries. We are inundated by manufactured color—sur-

rounded, immersed, swimming in a sea of color. Because of sheer

quantity, color is perhaps in danger of losing some of its magic. I

believe that using color in drawing and painting helps us to

recapture the beauty of color and to experience once again the

almost hypnotic fascination it once had for us.

Human beings have made colored objects from earliest times,

but never in such great quantity as now. In past centuries, colored

objects were most often owned by only a few wealthy or powerful

persons. For ordinary people, color was not available, except as

found in the natural world and as seen in churches and cathe-

drals. Cottages and their furnishings were made of natural mate-

rials—mud, wood, and stone. Homespun cloth usually retained

the neutral colors of the original fibers or, if dyed with vegetable

dyes, was often quick to soften and fade. For most people, a bit of

bright ribbon, a beaded hatband, or a brightly embroidered belt

was a treasure to guard and cherish.

Contrast this with the fluorescent world we live in today.

Everywhere we turn, we encounter human-made color: televi-

sion and movies in color, buildings painted brilliant colors inside

and out, flashing colored lights, highway billboards, magazines

and books in full color, even newspapers with full-page color dis-

plays. Intensely colored fabrics that would have been valued like

jewels and reserved for royalty in times past are now available to

nearly everyone, wealthy or not. Thus, we have largely lost our

former sense of the wondrous specialness of color. Nevertheless,

as humans, we can't seem to get enough color. No amount seems

too much—at least not yet. True, quite a few individuals objected

to the "colorization" of vintage black-and-white films. These

arguments, however, were lost to commerce; most people pre-

ferred the colorized versions.

But what is all this color for? In the natural world of animals,

birds, and plants, color always has a purpose—to attract, repel,

conceal, communicate, warn, or assure survival. For present-day

humans, has color even begun to lose its purpose and meaning?

Now that we have this huge bulk of manufactured color, is its use

230

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

Fig 11-3. Color Wheel. Complements are directly

opposite each other on the wheel. The complement

of each primary color (yellow, red, and blue) is a

secondary color (violet, green, and orange). The

complement of each tertiary color is another

tertiary color.

Because any complementary pair always

contains, between the two hues, all three primary

colors, complements completely cancel color

when mixed together in equal quantities. This

characteristic is the key to controlling intensity

of hues.

Exercise: The pattern for making your own color

wheel is on page 234.

Fig. 11-4. Value scale. A scale in even steps

between the opposites, the white of the paper and

the darkest dark the pencil will make.

The inset strip is the same value throughout. The

apparent change in value is a perceptual illusion,

caused by the differences in contrast between the

light-to-dark tones of the scale and the constant

value of the central strip.

Exercise: Make a value scale of twelve steps, using

pencil.

Fig. 11-5. Heather Heilman, age 6, The Park, 12x18".

Courtesy of The International Child Art Collection,

Junior Arts Center, Los Angeles, California.

Children tend to use symbolic color as well as

symbolic forms. These symbol systems are linked to

language acquisition: "Trees have green leaves and

brown trunks." Learning perceptual skills helps older

children to see beyond these symbolic systems.

Exercise: Review Chapter Five on childhood draw-

ing, then redraw your own childhood landscape,

this time in color.

Fig. 11-6. Edgar Degas, Ballet Dancer in Position Facing 3/4 Front (1872). Soft black graphite

accented with black crayon, heightened with white on pink paper. 16+1/8 x 11+1/4. The Fogg Art

Museum, Harvard. Bequest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs.

Exercise: To experience the impact of color on drawing, compare this drawing with another

Degas dancer on page 157. See page 237 for a drawing exercise.

Fig. 11-7. Kathe Kollwitz, Self-Portrait (c. 1891/92).

Pen and black ink with brush and gray wash,

heightened with white gouache, on brown wove

paper. 15+13/16 x 12+11/16". The Art Institute of Chicago.

Gift of Margaret Day Blake, Mr. and Mrs. Alan Press,

and Prints and Drawings Purchase, 1980.

Over her lifetime, the German artist Kathe Kollwitz

produced more than fifty probing images of herself.

This serious, contemplative self-portrait was drawn

when the artist was about twenty-five and reflects

her early training in engraving.

Exercise: Try a heightened self-portrait, using the

procedure described below.

The artist sits in front of a mirror, cheek resting on

hand. The light, as you see, comes from above and to

the left of the sitter (note the shadow cast by the nose

and the crest shadow along the wrist).

Working on brown paper, quickly paint a dark

negative space around the head, using a brush and

black ink mixed with water. The brown of the paper

supplies the middle value for the face.

Use a tiny brush to draw in the details of the face

in black ink, and the same tiny brush to heighten the

drawing with white gouache. The heightening lines

follow the curve of the surface of the face, almost as

though you are feeling your way across the forms.

Fig.11-8. HenriToulouse Lautrec, At the Circus:

Work in the Ring (1899). Colored pencil with pastel and

black crayon on ivory wove paper. 21.8 x 31.6 cm.

The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. B. E.

Bensinger.

Exercise: For practice with color, negative space,

and sighting, copy this drawing using colored pencil

and pastels, but change the colors to those of your

own choice to see the effect of color on drawing.

Fig. 11-9. Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (French, 1699-1779),

Self Portrait with a Visor (c.1776|. Pastel on blue laid paper

mounted on canvas. 18 x 14+13/16 (457 x 374 mm). The Art Institute

of Chicago, Clarence Buckingham Collection and Harold Joachim

Memorial Fund.

Fig.11-10. Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Portrait of Madame

Chardin (c. 1776). Pastel on blue laid paper mounted on canvas.

18 x 14+15/16 (457 x 378 mm). The Art Institute of Chicago,

Helen Regerstein Collection.

Toward the end of a long career as a successful painter of still lifes and scenes of everyday

life, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin turned to pastels, a new medium for him, and to

portraiture, an unexplored subject. Only twelve Chardin pastels are known to exist today,

foremost among them the two masterpieces shown above. These portraits illustrate a point

made in the text: rich and profound color can be achieved by using very few hues. The basic

hues in each of the portraits are the complements blue and orange, each transformed into a

complex harmonious medley of balanced values and intensities.

Exercise: Try a portrait or self-portrait on colored paper using only two complementary hues

plus white and black. The masterworks above can guide your efforts to gain control of color.

Fig, 11-11. Elizabeth Layton, Self-Portrait in a Mirror. Colored pencil on paper. Reproduced

with kind permission of the artist.

Elizabeth Layton first began drawing at age 68 with the hope of finding relief from severe

depression following a stroke. Drawing proved therapeutic (she calls it "cure by contour")

and she continued to draw. Since then, herwork has been exhibited nationwide and is greatly

admired. She believes that everyone can learn to draw and that children in particular should

be taught to draw at an early age.

Fig. 11-12. Photograph of Elizabeth Layton. Reproduced with kind permission of the artist.

Exercise: Try a colored-pencil self-portrait in a mirror, including your hands.

Fig. 11-13. Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled

(Ocean Park) (1977). Acrylic, gouache,

cut-and-pasted paper. 18+1/4 x 32+3/4"

(47.6 x 83.2 cm). Collection, The Museum of

Modern Art, New York. Purchase.

Exercise: Working within an unusual format

(tall and narrow, short and wide, circular,

oval), divide the space and manipulate the

quantities of hues to achieve a pleasing,

harmonious balance and tension (a sense of

connection or "pull") between color areas.

Fig. 11-14. Brian Bomeisler, Adam and Eve.

1984. Mixed media on paper. 10 x 9".

Collection of the artist.

This New York artist explores color, light,

and scale through themes from mythology

and literature.

Exercise: Experiment with scale by using

contrasting sizes-very large to very small.

Experiment with light by changing the values

of a hue to achieve luminosity in color.

Observe how the artist achieved a wonder-

ful sense of luminous color in Adam and Eve.