Sculpture and Painting

I was having a conversation with my Color Theory professor a few days ago about how different painting is from sculpture. I said, "It's like there's more compromise in painting than there is in sculpture. Maybe sculpture is more deliberate?" This post is intended to be a little more of an in-depth exploration of the differences between painting and sculpting.

Why does it seem like I'm always trying to compromise with color in paintings instead of deliberately making them do what I want? Why does sculpture seem more deliberate, and less like a guessing game at times?

Color works specifically with the eyes and the response to visual stimulus, but it seems as though there's a different realm when it comes to sculpture. It's a difference I've been trying to understand for myself since I decided to become a sculpture major a year ago here at UNCG. What is the difference between the visual realms of color and space? Space seems to be something that is felt with the mind more than seen. Our way of understanding space requires a different part of the mind, it almost seems. There is a strange dichotomy, though, that tends to complicate things. What is the real difference between looking at sculpture and looking at paintings? Both are visual stimuli, dependent on aesthetics and concept, both are art. You can walk around a sculpture, but some paintings also have a feeling of depth that can create a feeling of space.

So what is the feeling of space? And what is the feeling of color?

Color, in its purest form, seems to actively communicate with our eyes. It is either there, or it isn't. It is finite, deliberate. Space is all around us, all the time. Our awareness of it changes and it sometimes altered because of sculpture. Perhaps the difference lies in that: color is more active than sculpture because it generates new perception each time we see it; space is something we're more or less always aware of, and the sculptor's job is to manipulate what's already there to make our perception of space more powerful. Which is harder? I'd definitely say that painting is harder. It seems as though every time I start a new painting, I end up asking myself, "How did I get to this point? What is happening with these colors. What are these colors doing?" It becomes a question of specifically how the colors are communicating with me rather than a question of whether or not the colors are communicating at all or what I want them to communicate. I feel like I ask similar questions when sculpting, but don't have to try as hard to explain it to myself. Is space understood more easily than color? Perhaps with me, it is. Perhaps with others, it is not.

It's a difficult issue. Lately I've been trying to figure out ways to explore the differences between painting and sculpture more deeply than I have been. If anyone else has any thoughts about thisto it, I'd love to hear them. I could go on forever about this issue. (But I won't. I'll stop here.)

Poetry

These are two poems I've written recently that have strong hindu and buddhist influences. I thought I might share them.

Godhead

The longest finger: a flame.
A perfect-circle is formed
A consolidation-consensus is reached.
In the name of the Holy, they produce a flame.

A vibrant sustenance, tarred and burning
Expelled, expelled, expelled, expelled.
Slowly, the waving vibration of sundanced trees
Of a long and snaking line of time.

A grand expansion grows to transcendence.
AngerLanguageWorry fall to humanity.
And what is left but a wordless art, teeming and golden
Seen perfectly through infinite strings of life?




Mandala

Living beings, like tiny specs of organ
Squeeze past one another in a mass of entanglement.
Patterns, internal, move them.

A universal hum emerges from one
Then another
And, finally, all.

An internal movement, an external pattern,
A pulse like ephemeral light.
And all are rendered still.

Collage

Our next big project in Art 220 is a collage still life. I just wanted to post a few of my thoughts about collage in general.

First of all, I'm excited that this still life and study of depth of field and value is going to be done in collage. Still lives can be so boring sometimes when we draw them traditionally... at least for me they are. I always have to put some extra effort into finding things in the drawing and about the material used that interest me, and this can be tough sometimes, especially when one has to focus on still lives a lot, like in a drawing class. But this collage project has a different feel and energy. There's something very physical and tangible about putting a collage together; about creating pieces for the space and treating each one with glue and sealing it. Collage seems freer and less formal. If one space needs editing, we can simply make more pieces and glue over it. We don't have to worry about erasing and blending and carefully shaping the form in space as we might with graphite or charcoal. Collages are piece-y, perhaps treated with no less care, but with entirely different attributes.

Collages have a look about them that communicates energy and a physical handling of material. They can appear to be quick and somewhat inconsistent. Some can even appear messy or haphazardly put together, but they often still have charming qualities that we love. What is it that we love about collages? Perhaps it's that energy that we can feel emanating from them... we know and can see that each piece of the collage was carefully shaped and glued down and sealed by the artist. Though some collages can look messy and scattered, we know that each piece was placed where it is by the artist for a reason. Anyone who's ever made a collage knows this and has experienced this. Perhaps this gives a collage its sense of uniformity despite its piece-y-ness.

I personally love making collages. It's a process of searching. It's all about searching and shaping: searching for places the pieces might fit, searching for pieces that might fit the places, shaping pieces to fit the places and shaping places to fit the pieces. You can go into as much detail as you want. You can make it as chunky as you want. There's a lot of freedom when it comes to collage. It's fun for me. It's a good way for me to do a still life because I find it refreshing.

Last spring I attended a Zombie Convention at one of the hotels in Greensboro. As one might expect at a ZombieCon, most of the art there was dark and macabre, a sort of surrealistic study of fear and boogie monsters. But I met one artist who did his work in collage. Most of his art was of a surrealist, fantasy genre, and little of it was actually as darkly macabre as the other art. His prints were beautiful - wild, thriving landscapes with all kinds of imaginary creatures and plants put together with pieces completely found and cut out of magazines. They were huge pieces with incredibly elaborate detail - posters full of stunning and colorful eye candy. I was fascinated with his work. I asked him about some of them, and he showed me one piece that took him two years to do. Two years. I couldn't fathom it. Working on the same collage piece for two years? I was completely blown away. Imagine all the magazines he must have leafed through, searching for just the right pieces to express his vision. Imagine all the trial and error he must have experienced: Will this piece work here? How do I feel about this? What is the whole thing missing? What can I add? What should I take away? This whole process of searching (again, collage seems to be fundamentally about searching) fascinates me. Putting together the perfect collage out of pieces he finds or stumbles upon... something seems vividly poetic about it. We could see it as a metaphor for life. We could see it as a metaphor for love and relationships. We could see it as a metaphor for a casserole. There's a lot we can learn from collaging and thinking about collaging, I believe. I'm excited about this project.

Sitting

I've always had a fairly distant relationship with Drawing. He and I don't really see each other very often. He's like one of those obscure relatives that you only see at reunions or funerals and can't really remember anything about. We have our subtle exchanges every now and then. Our paths cross. But we never really leave any deeply important impressions on one another.

I'd like to say that it's not because I don't like Drawing or that I don't get along with it. But that wouldn't be entirely true. Drawing has a very still, quiet nature. It has a slow, deeply concentrated language that's difficult to understand. There are often many mistakes in translation. It makes discourse difficult. For me, the hardest thing about getting along with Drawing is the sitting.

There are different ways of seeing the world. The way that seems to be most deeply ingrained into our nature is not the way that artists must see the world. We normally look at things quickly. Our eyes are fast. They flick from thing to thing or person in moments that can be smaller than a fraction of a second. Our brains process our visual information just as quickly. We do this when we are sitting. We do this when we are talking. Driving. Walking. Listening. The only time we tend to stare is when our minds are wandering. It is difficult to truly study something with your eyes. It takes concentration and it takes the strength to resist distraction.

My sculpture professor, Andy, teaches a very drawing-intensive class. "Drawing is more important than any other aspect of art," he says. "If you can't draw, you can't be an artist." For nearly two weeks, we spent all our studio time drawing the objects we were to make sculptures of.

I think about this a lot. Is Andy right? I think about Monet's paintings and the statements he makes about the nature of seeing. His attention lies in the impression of color and often movement. His paintings are quick, rough. His new, "modern" way of seeing and painting was quick, just like the movement of the eye. Just like the information that is processed in our brains. He tried to paint in the same way that he saw. For Monet, there was no careful study of form and line. There was no slow, careful movement with the brush. There was little gradual movement from one value to another. Monet went out into the modern industrial world and painted the fleeting colors and shapes and movements that the eye catches in short instances. I doubt that he would have spent hours sitting in front of a still life with charcoal and paper.

So why must artists draw carefully measured representations that require our full concentration that can sometimes take hours? Why must we study shape and line and value so slowly and meticulously time and time again? Why should we go against what our eyes are made to do? Why must we practice seeing slowly and deliberately?

It is very difficult for me to sit and draw. It takes all the willpower I have to make my eyes slow down, make my brain and hands slow down. To search for the lines and interpret them correctly. To understand the drawing, to understand the space created on my paper.

While Monet's ideas about seeing and painting undoubtedly make him one of the world's most influential artists, we obviously can't use him as an excuse to stop us from practicing the slower ways of seeing. The fact of the matter seems to be that in order for artists to truly understand the language of shapes and lines and value and other things we see, we must take the time to truly look at them. We must study them. We must try to recreate them. We must first know the language of aesthetics before we can use it to our own benefit when creating art. And so we draw. This is what I understand thus far.

Obsessive Contour Line Drawing of an Intensely Complicated Subject:

For Thursday, you are to make a contour line drawing of a subject you would characterize as "intensely complicated." Examples: a patch of grass, tree bark, a close of view of leaves on trees, a wall of bookshelves, wood grain....Your drawing must come from life--and not from a photograph.

Remember, a contour line drawing is a drawing comprised of a LINE--NO value, no shading, no stippling, no shadowing, etc.

Materials: Ball point pen or felt-tipped marker, 18"x24" white drawing paper

Follow these guidelines when drawing:
1. Use a singular, non-hairy, confident, SLOW line.
2. PAINFULLY SLOW (so slow you can't believe how slow you are drawing): I am asking you to draw slowly because this is a drawing about looking, and you can only really look if you slow yourself down and force yourself to look at everything, however minute or seemingly unimportant.
3. Connected to #2 is that I want you to have NO hierarchy of imagery; for example, if you were to draw a wall, or a floor, the smudges on the wall or floor are just as important as say, a painting hanging on the wall, or a chair sitting on the floor. If you were drawing a face, the freckles, moles or blemishes are just as important as the features. Draw EVERYTHING, even things you don't typically characterize as valuable, or worthwhile.
4. Fill the entire page--top to bottom, corner to corner, edge to edge.
5. Record as much detail as possible. Be obsessive with your RECORDING of information. It might be helpful to imagine that you are recording something incredibly important for someone who will never actually see your subject matter; instead they must rely on how well you record what you see.
6. No erasing.
7. Use a ball-point pen or a felt-tipped marker. If you make a "mistake," leave it and move on.
8. This is not a drawing about proportion. This is a drawing about looking and recording--about pushing yourself to SEE more than you do initially. ASSUME you are missing information, and push yourself to always record more.
9. Don't think too much--LOOK, LOOK, LOOK!!