The Art of Responsive Drawing
by Nathan Goldstein
Here is the page with the definition ... way to go internet
The Art of Responsive Drawing sixth edition Nathan Goldstein 1 Gestural Expression Deduction Through Feeling pp. 1-7 A Definition Responsive drawing is the ability to choose from an observed or envisioned subject those characteristics that hold meaning for us and to be able to set them down in concise and (to us) attractive visual terms. It is the ability to join percept to concept, that is, to merge what we see in the subject with what we want to see in the drawing, and to show this integration of inquiry and intent in the completed work. To do this we must consider one of the most compelling features of any subject – its fundamental visual and emotive nature. The French painter Paul Cezanne gave sound advice when he urged artists to “get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.”An important aspect of “what is at the heart” of any subject is the arrangement of its parts.And seeing this arrangement is the necessary first step. To often, however, beginners start at the other end of what there is to see. Instead of establishing a subject’s overall configuration and character,they start by recording a host of small facts. Usually, they are soon bogged down among these details and, like the person who could not see the forest for the trees, they fail to see just those general conditions that would enable them to draw the subject in a more responsive and telling way. No wonder, then, that when confronted by any subject, whether a figure, landscape, or still life, most beginners ask, “How shall I start?” The complexity of a subject’s volumes, values, and textures, and the difficulty of judging the relative sizes and the positions of its parts, seems overwhelming. There appears to be no logical point of entry, no clues on how to proceed. If the subject is a figure, many students, knowing no other way, begin by drawing the head, followed by the neck, followed by the torso, and so on. Such a sequential approach inevitably results in a stilted assembly of parts having little affinity for each other as segments of the whole figure. Regardless of the subject, the process of collecting parts in sequence, which should add up to a figure, a tree, a bridge, or whatever, is bound to fail. It will fail in the same way that the construction of a house will fail if we begin with the roof or the doorknobs, or, realizing this is impossible, if we finish and furnish one room at a time. Such a structure must collapse because no supportive framework holds the independently built rooms together. Without an overall structural design in place, none of the systems common to various rooms, such as wiring or heating, can be installed without tearing apart each room. Without such an overall design none of the relationships of size or location can be fully anticipated. Every building process must begin with a general design framework, its development advanced by progressive stages until the specifics of various nonstructural details are added to complete the project. So it is with drawing. But even before the measurements and layout of a building harden into a blueprint, there is the architect’s idea: a conviction that certain forms and spaces, and their scale, location, texture, and material will convey a certain expressive order. An architectural structure, like any work of art, really begins as a state of excitation about certain form relationships. Similarly, all drawings should begin with a sense of excitation about certain energies and patterns beneath the surface of the subject’s forms. Seeing these possibilities in the raw material of a subject, the responsive artist establishes a basis for interpretation. The “answer” to the question, “How shall I start?” is provided by the general arrangement of the subject’s forms. Seeing the harmonies and contrasts of large masses, the patterns of movement suggested by their various directions in space, and their differing shapes, values, and sizes, gives the artist vital facts about the subject’s essential visual and emotive nature –what we call its gesture.
Gesture drawing is more about the rhythmic movements and energies coursing through a subject’s parts than about the parts themselves.That is why such drawings emphasize the essential arrangement and form characteristics of the parts rather than their edges, or contours. In gesture drawing, contour is secondary to urgings of motion among broadly stated forms. Such drawings tell about the actions, tensions, and pulsations that issue from the general condition of a subject’s masses and their alignments in space – they are about essence, attitude, motivating force, quintessence, vivacity, energy, dynamism, spirit rather than specifics.
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