Stepping out of line

I've always loved to draw -- no wonder I still find it absorbing to do even elementary drawing exercises like the one above. This one, drawn "blind" (looking at the subject but not looking down at the drawing in progress) from a newspaper photo of two chefs smilingly showing off their creations, was proposed by a painter/teacher as a useful warm-up for painting. Its focus is obviously not on exactitude, but on "losing the edges" and capturing shapes within a broad form.

Many traditional artists consider "good draughtsmanship" a prerequisite for good painting, and I still try to follow Renoir's maxim, "Draw every day, even if it is something as simple as an apple. One can so easily lose the knack." At the same time, I've tried to  develop my painting skills, holding to the counsel of one of my drawing teachers (and many others): "The best way to learn to paint is to paint." Some years ago, though, I decided I would benefit from a little more structure and analysis and began to keep a workbook.

As I plan each painting, I record my initial impulse, what I aim to achieve, and, as it moves along, the process I follow. When the painting is finished, I make a brief self-assessment.

One thing I've repeatedly come to recognize is that my love for drawing -- for the crisp line especially -- is something of an impediment to my development as a painter. Again and again, I've considered how to "lose the edges" and felt that there's a hurdle here I need to get by.

Recently, some things have begun to click. In the spirit of "When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come," I happened to come across references in three different art books to Heinrich Wölfflin, an early 20th-century art historian and author of Principles of Art History: The Problem of Style in Later Art (and if that sounds ponderous, it's far less so than the original title in German, Kunstgeschichtliche something-something-something).

Reading the book offered me several a-HA moments -- ones which I won't try to summarize here. The key point for me at this time in my development is that Wölfflin was the first to make the distinction in artistic styles between the "linear" approach (think Dϋrer and Holbein) and what's been translated into English as the "painterly" approach (think Rembrandt).

Closer to home, consider my light-hearted "Conversations" series of about a year ago. "Conversations - 1" is painterly:

"Conversations - 4" is linear:

Wölfflin doesn't judge one to be superior to the other -- though it's clear that this thorough, analytical German loves art and gets most excited when he talks about the painterly. His basic premise is that the earlier (historically) linear style relates to the "tactile" -- the eye can follow the line around edges and shapes; in contrast, the painterly begins to rely solely on the visual, as the eye alone must make sense of what it sees before it.

One of the artist/writer/teachers who led me to these useful concepts feels that artists have a natural tendency towards either the linear or the painterly. Certainly this seems to be so in my case, based on a whole lot of personal artistic history, painted evidence, and my strong likes and dislikes. (Has Facebook forever ruined these words for us?). After all, what could be more linear than my recent "A Question of Scale"? 

Still, I've been shown a way to work alongside, if not over, that hurdle, and I'm giving it a try right now with my current work-in-progress. Alas, I'd already planned a composition -- in fact, a whole series -- that shouts "Linear!" but that will be part of the thrill of the chase. Wölfflin talks about "painting in patches" rather than "painting in lines" -- and my little wipe-cloth, at least, is already filling up with some painterly evidence.