The Beauty of Line

The Drawing EZine

The Balinese place a high value on making art and in many towns and villages there is an intense dis-play of painting, drawing and sculpture.

The creative impulse is an integral part of commu-nity life. Just outside of the town of Ubud, the art capital of Bali, located in the interior of the island is a remarkably decrepit building jam-packed with artists pursuing all manners of painting. The stu-dios are make-shift, they cobble together their own easels and taborets, and, more often thannot, their bed-roll for the night is tucked into a corner. Many of the artists live and paint in their cramped studios. It is called the Art Zoo and is open to anyone willing to climb the rickety stairs.

There is also a studio in the hurly-burly center of Ubud that offers twice weekly life drawing sessions for the regal sum of 20,000 Rupiah, the Indonesian currency. That works out to two US dollars. Comfort is not the criteria here. You bring your own gear, grab a pillow

The focus of this drawing lesson is to render a conte portrait using only line to suggest three-dimensional form.

Working with sharpened sanguine conté on a quarter sheet of Fabri-ano Ingres drawing paper I quickly established the arabesque of my Bali laundress.

The Arabesque is the entire outside shape of the head. After checking that my overall proportions were correct I then lightly indicated the placement of the brow-ridge and the base of the nose.

When striking the arabesque archi-tectonically succinct lines proffer a sense of solid form. What I mean by this is that I employ short straight lines to describe rounded shapes. Keep your initial lines quite light, my lines shown here are signif-icantly darker than I would nor-mally use; the reason for this is so that you can see what I have done here.

Almost every beginning, and not so beginning, artist embarks upon their art career seeking to draw and paint objects.

The trained artist knows to look first for the big shapes. Whether a portrait or a landscape or still life, shape is the primary criteria: shape establishes by its placement the composition and also the emo-tional timbre of the work. Elon-gated shapes generally speak to melancholy whereas squares and circular shapes bespeak of childlike joy. An emotional tension can be affected in a drawing or painting by shading square and circular shapes with melancholic overtones. This, however, is the purview of master artists.

The likeness of a portrait is significantly determined by its overall shape. Many artists refer to this as the contour. I prefer to use the term arabesque as it also denotes rhythm and the beauty of line.

The tragedy is that most artists cannot accurately strike a shape. Yet this is a skill that is easily acquired. Spending as little as a single month focused on your arabesque striking skills will set you heads and shoulders above the vast majority of artists.

With linear drawing the structure of forms need to be suggested rather than fully rendered. Suggesting form accurately in portrait drawing requires a solid understanding of anatomy and facial structure.

True, one can travel a fair distance without the anatomical knowledgebut there will come a time when you cannot progress any further without it.

I lightly sketched in the nose first (this is the largest facial feature and its correct placement makes it much easier to place the eyes and mouth), followed by the eye sock-ets (not the eyes! This is impor-tant), the cheeks and the openingof the mouth.

When drawing the mature portrait you need to consider the aging process of the skull and muscu-lature. The facial bones contract and their edges appear sharpened. The musculature thins (there are exceptions, of course, with larger people) and gravity extracts its toll.

I met a remarkably spry elderly gentleman at the Ubud drawing sessions. Ben [not his real name] wasa widower and former English university professor, and WWII veteran who was amongst the thousands of very young men who stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944, who had retired to Bali.

His meagre pension allowed him to live adquately in Bali and to pursue his art. He didn’t drive a car, he rode an antique bicycle that he confidently merged into the chaotic maelstrom of honking scooters and trucks and errant pedestrians that is the traffic of Ubud. Even more astounding was that to get to his house in Penestanan, a community of expatriates living amongst the rice paddies, he had to climb 107 steps (I counted them all. Several times.) up a steep incline carrying his bicycle, groceries and art gear.

Ben was 83 years old and didn’t look a day over 70. If anything Ben was a testament to the benefits of a mostly pleasant tropical climate and the courage to live his life his way.

Oil Painting TechniqueThere are basically two approaches to painting: The Illustrative which most untrained artists employ and which, overall, is a limited mode of artmaking and the Painterly which is the most fluid, engaging and expressive.

Oil paint is the richest and most versatile mean of expression. But if you don’t know how to build-up and apply oil paint the result can often be a lifeless and dull result. In this one-day workshop you will learn the universal skills and principles of painting.

The workshop is presented in three parts: first, is the underpainting and block-ing-in of the primary light/dark pattern. This pattern is called the Notan (meaning light/dark harmony) and this is what ‘sticks a painting to the wall’. If your Notan is not compelling, then unfortunately neither will be your painting. Learn what makes for a good Notan.

Second is the Abbozzo which is the dead coloring in. This is the initial draft of your color harmony. When a painting looks dull it is because the color is not in harmony. In this workshop you will learn the major color harmonies that unify and make paintings glow.

Third is the Overpainting. The overpainting is the show! You will learn how to build up the abstract structural surface of an oil painting with brushwork and the palette knife while learning about the seven contrasts that make for good painting.

The surest and most efficient way to learn how to paint is by copying the great masters. You wouldn’t want to learn music by only playing your own compositions; you wouldn’t get very far. It is by copying that you learn the language of painting. And it is by copying that you gain deeper insights.

The French Impressionist Eduoard Manet is the ideal candidate for learning how to paint. He is the bridge between Academic craftmanship and contemporary expression.

You will copying one of Manet’s final floral paintings at its actual size. Painting flowers provides the widest range of acquiring your technical skill-set: from developing your visual acuity (i.e., drawing accuracy, modeling form with both tone and color) to realizing your own unique expression vis-a-vis your paint handling.

Oil Painting Technique @ Arteastiq - Mandarin Gallery333A Orchard Road, Singapore

Wednesday, 31 October, 201811:00 to 18:00 SG $247

A SG$50 deposit will reserve your space. All materials are supplied. Included with the Workshop is Michael Britton’ s Fundamentals of Oil Painting Ebook Sign up for 2 workshops get 10% off / Sign up for 3 workshops get 15% off*Does not include En Plein Air Workshop.

Portrait Drawing

Learn how to draw realistic portraits in this one-day workshop. This intensive work-shop employs the same tried-and-true method that has well-served generations of master artists.

In the workshop you will learn:

• How to work from general to specific you beginning with striking and verifying the arabesque (the overall, rhythmic shape that establishes the likeness);

• Train your eye to gauge, then verify the general facial proportions;

• Using line and tone simultaneously learn how to block in the overall light/dark pattern. Good portrait drawings also possess a compelling notan;

• Learn how the planes of the head define the underlying structural symmetry of the face to effect a three-dimensional portrait;

• Plot and articulate the facial features by learning how to use the plumb line to fix vertical and horizontal relationships;

• Plasticity means ‘giving form to’. Utilizing the painterly additive/subtractive process you will learn how to develop tone with cross-hatching, stumping and rendering edges and highlights with the kneaded eraser.

In this one-day workshop you will be working with sanguine conte which is an excellent medium for transiting from drawing to painting.

All materials are supplied. Included with the Workshop is Michael Brittonxs Fundamen-tals of Portrait Drawing (38 lessons).

Portrait Drawing @ Arteastiq - Mandarin Gallery333A Orchard Road, Singapore

Thursday, 1 November, 201811:00 to 18:00SG $247

A SG$50 deposit will reserve your space. All materials are supplied. Included with the Workshop is Michael Britton’s Fundamentals of Oil Painting Ebook Sign up for 2 workshops get 10% off / Sign up for 3 workshops get 15% off*Does not include En Plein Air Workshop.

Painting the Portrait in OilLearn how to paint realist portraits in oil in this two-day, intensive workshop.

On a 30x40cm, gessoed and streaked tone (this activates the surface and con-tributes toward an energized painting) panel the initial drawing will be inscribed so that you can focus wholly on the paint-ing process.

In this workshop you will learn:

Underpainting: This is the critical first step wherein the three components of good painting must be established simultane-ously: the Notan (dark/light pattern), the composition, and the drawing.

In this segment you will learn how to pre-pare the oil paint for underpainting, how to hold and draw with the brush and, how to apply the paint so that it corresponds har-moniously with the panel’s streaked tone;

Abbozzo: The initial ‘dead’ coloring-in establishes the general color harmony.Learn how to mix flesh tones ranging from dark to light/cool to warm using the Aca-

demic palette of nine colors from which any hue can be achieved.

The figure/ground (portrait/background) relationship is given consideration here too. Unity is the primary concern. In any painting the whole must be significantly greater than the sum of its parts;

Overpainting: Employing good painting practices fully engages oil paint’s refractive beauty.You will learn how to model and articulate form by ‘knitting’ (constructive) rather than blending (destruc-tive) to achieve a unified portrait instead of a disparate array of facial features.

By ‘fluting’ color (delicate touches of complementary tones) large, lit areas such as the forehead will come to life rather than dully flatten out.

The inherent beauty of oil paint’s body will be capitalized upon; the general rule is that the darks be painted thinly and the lights thick. Using both the brush and palette knife you will learn how to effect an engaging patina (the abstract structural surface) that expresses your unique voice.

All materials are supplied. Included with the Workshop is Michael Britton’s Painting the Portrait in Oil. S.

Painting the Portrait in Oil — two day workshop @ Arteastiq - Mandarin Gallery333A Orchard Road, Singapore

Wednesday/Thursday, 7 & 8 November, 201811:00 to 18:00 SG $497

A SG$100 deposit will reserve your space. All materials are supplied. Included with the Workshop is Michael Britton’s Painting the Portrait in Oil

Ebook. Sign up for two workshops get 10% off / Sign up for three get 15% off. .

My next decision, drawing and painting is really a series of deci-sion making – good and, some-times, bad, is to sketch in the various folds and twists of the headdress.

Drapery can be distilled into seven types of folds, each with their own distinct characteristics and logic.

Almost everyone travelling to Bali and Indonesia requires a visa. The most common visa is the 30-dayVisa on Arrival which you get at the airport for $25 USD. My preferred mode of travel is a modified Paul Thoreau (the somewhat testy travel writer) approach. What that means is: travel light. As an artist I have to make a choice between taking my 1.2 box French easel packed with art materials and clothes.

I opt for the former which can garner a few pointed questions from immigration officials. Clothes wear out quickly when travelling and I prefer to buy my clothes as I go along. A couple of $3 shirts and $5 short pants . you don’t need socks in Bali . and I’m set and, better still, I don’t stand out as a tourist.

Finding a taxi is never a problem in Bali. Avoiding the constant pleadings from drivers is altogether an other issue especially for someone like me who prefers to walk everywhere. You take the good with the bad . $3 taxi rides and $5 one-hour massages balanced against constant sale pitches. There are massage salons everywhere offering manicures to a good Balinese thumping to ease the stress of a day of painting. The most popular and cheapest massage salon in Ubud is Eve fs which is just off of Monkey Forest Road near the Three Monkeys Restaurant (another favorite of mine).

The stage is now set; the eyes and mouth can now be accurately placed. Other elements of the drawing such as the hair and money roll that my laundress car-ries in her ear are added.

I have also made a number of deci-sions to rework my lines. To soften the minor folds in the headdress I lessened the intensity of a few lines with my kneaded eraser.

Within the facial arena I also slightly lightened a few lines that I felt detracted from the overall sense of three dimensional form. Lighter lines recede whereas heavier lines advance.

With practice and experience you will find that your linear drawing becomes more fluid and expres-sive.

Most visitors to Bali stay at the resort hotels at Sanur and Kuta. Sanur is the quieter place and offers a more auhentic experience than Kuta and its immediate environs.

For my first visit to Bali I obtained a two-month visa and rented a small house in Penestanan which also came with daily housekeeping. Alas the house didn’t have laundry facilities, barring the bathroom sink, and I quickly tired of the constant hand washing of my clothes that is required in a hot, humid climate.

A little down the road was a shop that offered laundry services and I quickly become one of their best customers.

The laundress was an elderly Balinese woman, her name is Made, who not only thoroughly hand-washed my clothes but also ironed and folded them for only a few thousand rupiah. (One US dollar equals about 10,000 rupia.) One afternoon, however, my laundry had not dried in time which put me in a small fix. I travel with a very limited supply of clothing and the logistics of having fresh shirts requires

a delicate sense of timing. There was nothing for me to do but sit down and join my laundress in watch-ing a boxing match on a static-filled television. It wasn’t long before we cheering on our favorite boxers and downing a copious, at least for me, amount of Bintang beer which is the local brew. Well my boxer was knocked out in the ninth round and I was on the hook for a case of Bintang.

Over the course of a few weeks of more boxing matches and far too much Bintang I ventured to ask Made if she would sit for a portrait and she readily agreed.

Made is representative of Bali’s recent, and regrettably, lost past. On the one hand the tourist industryprovides many Balinese with employment and an income, albeit small, other than agriculture but it comes at a price. Much of the land that the resorts were built on were stolen or bought by force by the former Suharto dictatorship from the Balinese.

Now that I have a solid foundation I can add the flourishing touches such as the focus of the eyes, wisps of hair and further elaborate upon the roll of money that Made carried in her ear lobe.

The linear drawing can be either a drawing in and of itself or be utilized as a preparatory work for a more sustained work such as a painting.

Quite often artists will transfer the preparatory drawing, which is also called a ‘cartoon’, onto their canvas or other support by either using graphite carbon paper or pummac-ing the back of the drawing with charcoal dust and then tracing the drawing onto the painting support.

FOR ONE WEEK ONLY!

Drawing Portraits from Photographs is on SALE

ONLY $9.97!

START DRAWING NOW!

Learn the A to Z’s of drawing portraits from photographs with Michael Britton in this four hour instant video download! Step by step you begin by how to best set up your work station and proceed with striking the all-important arabesque and con-tinue with blocking in and working up the forms with cross-hatching.

Originally published for $97 as a DVD this workshop is now ON SALE as an instant video download for ONLY $9.97! But this sale has to end on Tuesday, April 8th at midnight PST.

A DEAL NOT TO BE MISSED!

The roll of money that Made carries in her ear lobe is a quixotic confluence of an exotic and innocent past and a modern cash economy. Friendly and apparently guileless and unaffected by numerous bottles of Bintang Made was an excellent model, I wish the same could be said for me: hot tropical afternoons, Bintang and betting on losing boxers made it extremely difficult to concentrate on my draw-ing.

Near the end of my stay in Bali it was while eating my supper at a local Warung (eatery) and watching a boxing match on the television that was blaring in the corner of the room that I realized I had been duped out of those cases of Bintang. The boxing matches that Made and I had watched and betted on were replays that Made had seen several times before.