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Drawing, accurately, requires:

     -Judging

     -Comparing

     -Relating

If I may make a general statement, it seems to me that EACH THING has a RELATIONSHIP to SOME THING, AT ALL TIMES.  Except a naked skydiver 8,000 feet above the ground with no parachute or anything has no relationship to ANY THING, until SPLAT!  The person hits the ground and now has a relationship with it.  Sorry to be so…well…descriptive.  But this is the gist of how ONE THING’S relationship to ANOTHER THING affects EVERYTHING.

Now, let’s think about just ONE THING.  It has different features setting it apart from OTHER THINGS.  This ONE THING may have height and width and even depth.  Part of it may be square and another part of it round. It could be said there are features about the ONE THING which make the THING what it is. All these features are related to each other in some way. 

There may be this THING setting here in front of us.  It is THIS tall and cylindrical.  It also has a round base.  The base is about a third as wide as its height.  The width of its opening at the top may be half as wide as it is tall.  From this description, you are getting a sense that this THING is a vase and what its shape is. Yet there is ONE missing detail.

The exact measurement in inches (or feet) for the height of the vase has not been mentioned, yet you know what it looks like, because you know  what the RELATIONSHIPS are among its features (well, of three of its features: height, opening and base).

When we begin to draw SOMETHING, we are going to draw relationships.  We are not concerned with how many inches tall SOMETHING is.  We are concerned with how wide some feature of it is compared with how tall it is.  

For instance, this is how it works in your mind and what you need to be saying to yourself when confronted with the task of drawing an apple.  Holding a stick up to it vertically, I say, “Hmmm, it is about “This X” high. Holding a stick up to it horizontally, I can say, “The width is three quarters of its height.” Now I am getting somewhere.  I can draw the apple with the correct relationships of how high it is compared to its width. Do you see how you can draw without identifying any actual measurements by sight or mechanically.

By the way, the apple is crazy and wavy looking because I did not compare the relationships among all its features.  Would it have been more round, had I compared? What features would I need to compare in order to draw its curves? (This is a tough one, but doable.)

This seems so elemental, yet all of drawing and being able to do it accurately, is judging relationships.  Greater accuracy for rendering SOME THING comes down to how many little relationships are compared by you, the artist.

Comparing relationships beyond mere lengths and widths, gives you a wealth of information.  Seeing how the curl of one part compares with the straightness of another part;  how the slant of one part compares with the verticalness of another part; and how much the space is between one feature and another, tells a lot.  Other features can be compared such as color, texture, darkness, to name a few.  These can all be viewed by their relationships.

When drawing, COMPARE RELATIONSHIPS!!!  It is like a puzzle.  How many different ways can you compare the features of ONE THING. 

STATE OF THE ARTS  

Two vases & a pot and an artichoke!

I’m a fan of plain-old drawing with pencil, charcoal, white pencil and a small piece of chamois.  (This is the kind of cloth used to polish and rub a  waxy shine on cars and trucks.)  I use it to rub my charcoal into the paper.  It smoothes out the graininess of charcoal particles and makes the greys evenly flow from dark black to light grey.  What a great “tool” to have in my collection of drawing materials.

Even though, I, Helen, am an acrylic painter and I combine paint with papers glued to my art surface (collage), drawing is my favorite thing.  A couple of my favorite drawings are shown above.  Drawing is relaxing, yet challenging. It sharpens my mind while I compare relationships of the various features of the objects I draw.

Helen Becker for Gallery Moab

59 South Main Street #1

Moab, Utah 84532

435-355-0024