A couple of books

[telophase]

I went to the bookstore during lunch today and ended up getting Vampire Doll 1, which I believe greenapple2004 had recommended to me some time ago. I read part of it while eating lunch and ... pretty cracktastic. The basic idea is that Guilt-na-zan was a master vampire a century ago, who was sealed into a black cross by an exorcist. It's a hundred years later, and the exorcist's descendant has brought Guilt-na-zan back ... in the body of a life-size wax doll. Because he needed a maid and he likes girls. It gets better, or worse, depending on your attitude. This doll is made in the likeness of the exorcist's young, innocent sister. And Guilt-na-zan can change back into his original form for five minutes if he sucks blood from the younger sister. Which, at one point, the exorcist videotapes.

The exorcist also has a twin brother who is as dumb as the proverbial bag of hammers, and Guilt-na-zan has a subtextual friend/lackey/whatever who is not quite as dumb as the brother. So far it's been amusing in that "Oh you are not going to go ther-- ah. I see you went there." sort of way. :) And the Amazon page has ART NOT FINAL stamped across the image, which is, indeed, the final artwork. :)

The other book I found when searching for books on drawing in the library. It's Secret KNowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters by David Hockney. Hockney's argument is that the use of optical aids like lenses and the camera obscura were used a lot earlier then we think by artists, and that many of the Old Masters did so. Interesting. I've looked trhough the first few pages and have not yet been fully convinced by his arguments, although I'll point out that I think the Old Masters used whatever methods they had at hand, and if that included optics, then it included optics, and that art is in the eye of the artist and not in the tools they use.

But I decided I had to read it myself after seeing all the wank in the Amazon reviews. XD It breaks down into two camps - those who give it 4 or 5 stars and think it's interesting and thought-provoking, and those who give it one star, because OMG HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT THE OLD MASTERS' ACHIEVEMENTS WERE ALL DUE TO TRICKERY!!! (Showing that they didn't actually read the text too closely, because Hockney says that it still takes a very talented artist to do what they did.)

Regardless of your attitude towards it, it's worth reading for teh reproductions alone - the picture quality in this book is fantastic.

Comments

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

I've had that Hockney book for several years, and my impression is about the same as yours -- he overstates his case, but I think he's probably got one. The old masters thought of themselves as craftsmen, not lofty academic purists or holy priests of the ineffable art gods, and they would have used anything that came to hand if they thought it worked. This weird elitist art-school "But that's CHEATING!" whenever they hear about technical aids of any sort... sheesh. There's no such thing as the Federal Art Enforcement Agency, even if some people would love to appoint themselves to the post, just to beat actual producing artists over the head with their personal "rule book".

I've got a fine art degree, and a long career as a computer graphic artist, and IMO, the ONLY thing that matters is the final result. I've seen lifeless lens-distorted traced drawings, sure. I've seen even more shitty "pure hand-drawn" pieces. :D If using a projector makes the difference between a decent drawing and a nasty one... well, hell, use the projector. That's a no-brainer.

The point is to make art, not to make it the "right" way by someone else's definition. Odds are, if you've never done life drawing, you won't see the errors in a traced drawing, so you'll be at a disadvantage if tracing is all you EVER do. That's about the only downside I can see. Personally, I've tried a projector, but I don't use it much. It can come in handy in certain circumstances when you need precise photorealism or you have to work fast. In others, it's likely to introduce errors rather than avoid them. You've got to trust your eye, not the lens, and if your eye's not trained in the first place, you may get into trouble.

Then again, most people take photographic distortions as "the way it really looks" these days anyhow! So the average viewer will see nothing wrong with it at all if you slavishly imitate photography. Another proof of the impending apocalypse for the art priests to wail about, I guess. :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Oh, word.

One of the pictures near the beginning is this Holbein (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v280/telophase14/gisze.jpg) (this is from the 2006 expanded edition; I have no idea if it's in your edition) where you can see how he screwed up the perspective in the lower right-hand corner. Hockney says the discrepancies suggest distortions as viewed trhough a lens (or perhaps through moving a lens), but I think the explanation is simpler: he either used a lens or a straightedge and a vanishing point to plot out the table, then eyeballed the pewter thing of coins and got it wrong. I see that exact error all the time, including in my own work.


Federal Art Enforcement Agency. I love that. I can see them swooping down on DeviantArt, wearing black suits and ties with sunglasses, carrying briefcases. XD

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I wonder if all the "one star" people would agree that a Really Great Artist would select their own flint to knap for the tools they'd use in harvesting the plants that they'd make their own pigments from, and paint using, oh, I dunno, bamboo stalks whose fibers they'd softened by chewing it with their own teeth? Ya gotta look out for those high-tech shortcuts like tubes of manufactured pigments, mass-produced brushes (possibly with bristles of artificial fibers!) and suchlike, after all--"cheats" like that will corrupt the purity of the Art.

('Scuse me while I roll my eyes dramatically...)

One person's traditional method is another's spiffy new technique is yet another's high-tech "cheat". Or alternately, ...is another's stuffy obsolescent difficulty to be overcome.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I have to roll my eyes at the people who insist that if you can't draw from memory, you're somehow less of an artist than someone who can. Ridiculous. I'll agree that slavishly copying a photograph that someone else has taken shows your technical skills and not your artistry, because it was the photographer who came up with the composition and lighting you used, but to use a photo for reference? Easily allowable.