Drawing and Art

A recent book about drawing suggests that every person can draw. The premise of Stick Figures: Drawing as Human Practice, by D.B. Dowd, is that drawing is actually embedded in our human makeup. In his thesis, drawing is more than simply "art." Drawing began as communication. Consider that following the development of spoken language, drawing was humanity's first important way to share information. Well before writing, drawing was employed in a way that can only be interpreted as communication, regardless of content. Perhaps cave drawings were simple communication of animals seen or conquered. Cave drawings probably were also magical/ritualistic. Someone was trying to say something. Drawing can be art, certainly. One only has only to look at any number of surviving masterpieces. But a scrawled map on a piece of notebook paper is a drawing, too. So is a stick figure denoting a public toilet, or a traffic sign forbidding a left turn. We all draw, with varying degrees of facility and frequency.

Many insist that they can't draw at all. "Can't draw a straight line," or "never could draw," and so on. Mr. Dowd's central premise is that drawing is a human capacity. We all can and do draw. We draw for a lot more reasons than to make art. We draw to learn, we draw to explain, we draw to remember, and sometimes we draw for no reason at all (and call it doodling).

Hoff, "Fold studies," graphite, 2016

Mr. Dowd's book is not about how to draw. It is a book about why we draw. Mr. Dowd is a professor at Washington University in St Louis where he teaches Art and American Culture Studies, and he is also a veteran illustrator. He has background in both the theoretical and the practical side of drawing, and his illustrations, along with many others, illuminate his book. The book is beautifully organized, with each chapter's major sections listed at the beginning and all illustrations in color.

Mr. Dowd takes us on an intellectual journey from his basic premise that drawing is an essential part of humanness through comparisons of drawing and painting, exploring how "graphic" and "painterly" are distinct terms but still can overlap considerably. And he makes the point again and again that much drawing is a learning tool--to see how things work, where things can be found, how to accomplish various tasks. In each succeeding chapter he drives home the point. Although he employs somewhat obscure terms (glyphic vs. vedutic e.g.)when discussing some of his concepts, in the end his arguments for drawing as distinct from painting and distinct from art are persuasive.

In my own work, many drawings are for study. I most commonly draw in pencil or with a computer, studying ways to represent various real world items. In the sketchbook drawings above (Fold studies, 2016) the intent was to truly study--observe intensely--the sort of folds known as "half-locks". They are often seen in clothing at a bended knee or elbow, as above, and I wanted to understand how to draw them. The idea of course was to expand my visual vocabulary. These are not art. They are primarily drawings made to understand something.

Hoff, "Virginia," digital, 2019

Sometimes drawing helps me to study the medium itself and learn more techniques. For example, during the past several years I've worked hard to learn computer art programs, most notably Sketchbook and Painter. Drawings that I've done digitally were mostly studies--studying the medium itself, or the particular program, or the various tools offered by each. In other words, no matter how accomplished, these were for intended as personal instruction and not to stand alone. But once in a while a detailed, stand-alone piece happens. The drawing of Virginia Woolf (right) is an example of a stripped-down, graphic drawing in only three major values. It was done in Sketchbook with no intention of adding much detail, a truly graphic approach. The main idea was to capture Virginia Woolf's expression, the shapes of the eye sockets, nose and central face. This is not a finished drawing, but a sketch. It isn't only a study though. It stands as is, unfinished but satisfying in itself.

Hoff, "Shimon Peres, RIP," graphite, 2016

People do produce a drawings that are a) originally intended as art and b) more finished than a simple sketch. At the turn of the 20th century, John Sargent made many full-fledged portraits in charcoal, for example (and received handsome fees for them too). With this digital drawing of Shimon Peres, done on the occasion of his death, my intent was art--to draw a memorial to a great man who did much for his country. This graphite and chalk drawing was intended to show an expression of sagacity while providing a true likeness of the man himself. In short, it was a portrait from the first.

In sum, it seems to me that Mr. Dowd is spot on when he says that art is a human practice, and not necessarily fine art or even art at all.