At the start of this project, I was eager, I wanted to do something, anything, that wasn't photography. I'm a little bit sick to death of photography. After completing my degree in 2011, In photography, I just felt bored and stale. I'm really fed up with the ideals, the mechanics of it. Photography is not something that simply flows, it's a very structured practice that involves capturing real life things. The one thing I've always hated about it, is that you cannot photograph something that is not there, nothing can be made up, Unless you buy into Photoshop being the cure for all life's problems.
Anyway, I chose to look into illustration, and I'm glad I did. Its given me back the drawing ability that I started to lose. I have also started looking at the world differently since taking up illustration. I cant help but looking at shapes of lines of everything, and this helps me to remember how to draw that object without actually seeing it, such a thing as the shape of the back of a cats leg, not as simple as you might think, its actually very straight and angled, like a sideways L.
"For your illustrator with intuition should be able to draw much on his memory or imagination, or on whatever is called artistic reserve store that makes his work distinguished."
(Key, 1900)
I learn a lot from simply reading, and remembering, the illustration books and magazines that I've been reading over the last 2-3 months have influenced heavily on my thinking. I would have never considered the power of a line before, but my research has helped me to gain the historical and philosophical knowledge I needed in order to make my future drawings as technically good as possible.
"It is now the desire of the present scribe, under cover of a plea for the appreciation of some beautiful line drawings, to write within the narrows of personal observation of the pleasure to be found in one phase of illustration only - expression in pure line. This essential , a continuous line, clear an incisive, with the infallible quality of positivesness is, even with these seemingly rigid attributes, a beauty and dominating power in illustration when controlled, and so made submissively expressive to the thought it follows, by a vital something too illusive and charming to reason over, but which is one with the artist's personality and mastery of execution."
(Key , 1900)
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| The Coiffing - Aubrey Beardsley |
What Key talks about is the beauty and aesthetic quality of a well drawn line. The beauty can come from a continuous line that is of a good form, that comes from the artist as a form of expression. I enjoy these ideas that lines can contain personality, and agree that every artist draws in their own way, personality could be a reason for this. I believe that art should be fluid, it should be smooth and flowing from the body of the artist onto the paper or canvas in any medium, which is why I'm starting to dislike photography, as it does not allow a character of line to show through, it's not about subject matter to me, it's about the way in which the lines are created and mastered.
"In many cases it is really the essence; for, after all, upon the movement of the line depends on the rhythm, which in its grace, or whatever the particular quality may be, should appeal to the eye, and leave an impression akin to the one experienced when the harmony of some lovely ballad first meets the ear"
(Key, 1900)
I feel that this is a lovely statement to make ad describes what I feel perfectly. Illustration is something to be enjoyed and to be savoured. It is a skill that not everyone has, and those who can 'draw' cannot always in fact 'illustrate' I think this is the part of my project where I need to differentiate between my drawings, or sketches, to my finished illustrations. Illustrations preserve the quality of the line, the line is what becomes important, and it is the line that constructs and makes up the form, that creates the image to produce the beauty. I feel that different types of line hold different feelings, such as a pin point thin straight line, definitely holds a more rigid atmosphere than a thick relaxed curved line.
"In grouping the past schools and periods of Japanese draughtsmanship it has been found that ten different uses of line, or different styles were followed for the various kinds of expression; so much are the Japanese artists of system, a system of artistic limitations, forming a wonderfully interesting code of beauty"
(Key, 1900)
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| Japanese Drawing by Hokusai |
It is possible that the quality and emotion of line is something that crosses culture and language barriers, it is something that can be understood by anyone who wishes to understand it, and maybe even subconsciously by those who don't. I want to move my project on now to look at texturing the lines, and working with line thickness and textures of paper.
Key, M,.(1900) The Power Of Line in Illustration. Brush and Pencil. Vol 5 (5) pp.200-205, 207-217 [ONLINE] Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25505511 [Accessed 2 February 2012 at 20.06].
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