Tuesday, September 22, 2015

A horse

A hand-drawn picture for you, my sweets. A horse. I saw it somewhere. It was inspiring and I thought of you. In the style of Artist Guillaume Azoulay, have a look if you like  and see if it agrees.


4 comments:

Jim in St Louis said...

The graphic froze after the script displayed and I was afraid that it was something very clever like 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' .

But the .gif (or whatever) reloaded and I saw the drawing. Very nice.

Chip Ahoy said...

Such an odd way to draw a horse.

One time, very young, on an odd radar site tippy top a Pennsylvania mountain (The radar took care of a gap in defense coverage due to mountain range terrain) I went into the tiny library stocked surprisingly well. In grade 2 I checked out a book called "The Magic of Drawing."

There could be no magic to drawing.

Chuh. Everyone knows this.

I've been drawing for yeeeeeeears and knew I had much to learn because so many people were better. And books might help. But there is no magic. That's superstitious.

And if there IS magic then I want to get to bottom of it.

To draw a horse you start with circles. The book showed.

For the head the small face circle connect to the larger head circle with straight lines, for a bucket. Horses start out with bucket faces.

The book relied on construction lines.

You work out your two-dimensional armature with basic geometric forms.

I studied the steps carefully right there in the lie-berry.

The book shows CLEARLY all the construction lines, the tons of scribbles that lead to discovering the final outlines, shading and light, in their series of examples showing the picture progressing the lines disappear. Between step 7 and step 8 the lines disappear. In this horse example. In other examples the construction lines, a lot of scribbling there, all disappear between step 5 and step 6 and the final picture is all cleaned up.

Magically.

I scan the text for the word, "erase" because I must erase all my crap scribble lines to make my stuff look decent. Surely we must erase them. SAY SO. I gotta constantly clean up my stuff with erasure. I'm a mess. I saw the magic drawing guy on Captain Kangaroo who draws every thing in one go hidden behind a screen, perfect lines every time, but I cannot do that. In 2nd grade, and still, I must use a lot of erasure.

I read the whole text and it NEVER said erase the construction lines.

Perhaps this is the magic. I'm giving this book all the chances a child can give in the hope of discovering magic. The book is titled "Magic."

My mind is open to the possibility of there being magic behind drawing. Perhaps this is it. Magically self-erasing construction lines. If I just follow the instructions EXACTLY then maybe the book's magic will work.

Follow the words EXACTLY
Follow the pictures EXACTLY

I did.

Of course the construction lines stayed right there.

"Goddamnit. I knew it." Tricked into trying. I feel foolish. Here's your stupid book back. What a bummer punk. You guys suck.

ricpic said...

I get the dark tail lines but what are those dark lines from about the belly that flow past the hind legs? They're the only lines in the drawing that seem superfluous, to my eye anyway.

MamaM said...

dark lines...that flow past the hind legs?

Flow is the key word, ricpic, indicating intuition on the move as the flowing tail of another is what remains of a second horse that has all but galloped outside the frame ahead of the left brain of the viewer, who is stuck on Whuz dat? Horses are herd animals, where there's one, there's usually another, doing their own thing but staying close.

Well, that's my guess anyway, even if it's not true, it's how my right brain compensated for the Whuz dat? that cropped up on my side of the fence.

As for Guillaume Azoulay, who knew? Not me, I live and learn. Tons of books on the shelves and I've not heard of the man or seen his art. Self taught.

Guillaume Azoulay, a self-taught artist, was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1949. His parents settled in Paris when Azoulay was ten and by the age of thirteen, he was sketching and selling his drawings on the streets and planning his career as an artist. As Azoulay met people from various parts of the world, his interest in traveling grew and when he was fourteen he left home and hitchhiked across Europe and the Middle East. His desire to see and be part of the life, history and beauty of the world took him from Copenhagen to Rome, from Lisbon to Jerusalem. Azoulay made the world his university, people were his main subject with their joys and pains and ways of life. Guillaume became fluent in five languages.

If I had to guess, I'd say dyslexia may have been involved. He does not sound like someone who'd flourish in a school system. Better to make the world a university. What an outcome! I laughed when I saw the drawing, as it reminded me of time when I was having an roundish wound on my scalp stitched by family practitioner, and saw him open a locker in the room to look at a taped drawing of lines running down and around a human body, showing the best direction for stitches to go, as there is apparently one direction that is preferable to another if there is a choice. Who knew there too?