On the Right - Art class observations...

Art class might just be an equally foreign experience for me to actually being in a foreign country. My perfectionist tendencies are showing through quite clearly and I can't stand it. I tend to get hung up on details, focusing on the area of main attention such as a face, instead of getting the basics of the whole picture down first. We're working on drawing copies of masters half the time and drawing other people in the class the rest of the time. When doing copies, I tend to focus on copying the lines, drawing things as I think they should be based on the fact that it's a portrait, instead of seeing it as a collection of values - areas of light and dark.

We're given a quote to think about and comment on each week in class. This week's was the following from a student of Rembrandt:

---
Copying the drawings of the masters was an habitual exercise in his studio. The sketch of the whole emphasizing the essential elements was at the base of this exercise. The sketch should already express the character of the represented objects.

Contours should be drawn, not in a continuing manner, but rather fragment by fragment, with a lightness of hand, that the object be not closed but open to the light, that it may breathe in the enveloping atmosphere.

The placement of the shadows is very important; even from the beginning they should be accurately placed. It is the placement of the shadows and their harmonious rapport upon which depends the luminous effect of the whole. One must leave the paper the power to act by itself in orer to give birth to the light.
---

As we were discussing this in class today, our teacher put a drawing of Rembrandt's up on the wall. I couldn't take my eyes off of it - it seemed to perfectly capture the character of this charming old man but with surprisingly few defined details. There was only a suggestion of feet at the bottom of his pants. His head was merely a lightly sketched outline and his eyes just dots. And yet, what was there was perfect. You could get a sense of the whole as if the man jumped off the page into life, and the shadows were placed such that you knew where the light was coming from. Sometimes I feel like if I just took everything a little out of focus, as if I was looking at one of those magic 3D posters, I might stop seeing the people I'm trying to draw and see them instead as light and shadow.

I also wondered for the first time, how much the idea of art imitating life and vice versa applies here. I do believe in that sort of yin yang theory that without the bad you can't appreciate the good. It takes a balance of both to know the difference and to really experience life. Light and shadow. Taking it further though, how much of a person's character is made up not of defined traits, but mere relationships of light and dark? Fragments that come together harmoniously - where the mere suggestion of only the essential elements expresses the person as a whole. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say here, but it seems to be something to contemplate more in those 'philosophical' moments of art class. ;o )