Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
In my last post (Introducing Jasper) I described how Jasper my Springer Spaniel puppy has become my model but not an easy one as he is always on the move, unless asleep and even then he shape shifts. Really nothing that is alive will stay still, even a model in an academic setting that has been asked to hold their pose for hours, will breath and involuntary shift their weight and body to avoid pain or discomfort.
As I don’t like copying from photographs because I would rather catch, on paper or on canvas, the living thing I have in front of me, then the only way is, to become good at accurate speed drawings. Help!!! That sounds impossible, where do you start?
The most important thing at first is to just let go, trying to get something down and not worrying about the outcome. Drawing, as Van Gogh described it, is like being a miner and so there’s no point expecting to strike gold every time. The gold is waiting for you and it will only appear because you keep trying.
That being said it’s always good to aim at something and as I’ve got a moving object in front of me, I try for the line of movement. In the first sketch below it more or less follows Jasper’s vertebra. I tried this out while he was feeding because at least he was for a few minutes in one area and more or less in one direction. The other things to look at are shapes and to make them as simple as possible and if there’s something unusual like Jasper’s elbow sticking out, I try and catch it.
Line of movement, thinking of simple shapes; circles, cylinders and triangles and looking for something unusual.
Gesture is the goal, proportions go out of the window especially in the beginning. Getting the proportions right make something realistic, unless you are a master manipulator like Michelangelo who could create twists and exaggerated proportions but still make you feel you’re looking at someone real. Understanding proportions goes hand in hand with learning anatomy which I will be looking into in future posts.
These sketches were done when Jasper was a couple of months old and only a couple of weeks with us, one of my diary entries reads: ‘He’s growing and becoming more adventurous - he hasn’t discovered all the corners of the garden yet but has designated certain areas as his preferred places to take his prizes - which include my shoes and rotten apples.’ Jasper today is more than 8 months, it’s hot and we’re sitting outside under the shade of an apple tree. He’s beginning slowly to learn to settle, it’s not always time to work and play!