Zoma: drawing technics

         In Wednesday March 30 lecture, we learned about elements of drawing used by artists to convey their message throughout their work. Some of those Technics help to produce an illusion of space, on plane artworks. A viewer of a two-dimensional art drawing has full knowledge that he is watching a plane work. However he cannot free himself from the illusion of space throughout his exploration of the picture. We will discuss the elements of drawing used by artist by describing the drawing Village Street. Granada [?] drawn by Santiago Rusiñol (1861-1931) on paper, with graphite pencil.

            A line is a mark that connects two points. The line can be understood as the basic form from which derived all the forms, even curves, in the sense that a circle can be considered as a connection of very short lines. In the picture, we can only see a few lines especially used to represent sharp objects as short fissures and folds on the floor. We think that the artiste has drawn his work with a bold pencil.

            A contour line is a line that outlines the shape of an object. Contour lines are succession of lines. They can take any geometrical form according to the shape of the object. In this picture, it is not easy to see contour lines because the artist has ingeniously shades his work, so that the contours of objects appear to be the boundary between shades of different tones. However, we were able to see some contour lines by a zoom of the picture and they are cracks in the mount wall on the back right.

Foreground/ Middleground/ Background are the three areas in an artwork which determine proximity and space. Foreground objects have a intense tone and contour line, and are very rich in details. Background objects are vanishing and lack in details. Middlegrounds are in-between. As an example, we can compare the person standing at the back, whom we can barely distinguish his or her head, to the front of the building that presents significant details.

Overlapping is the placement in a composition of one object in front of another, in order to create the illusion of depth. The artist trying to represent a three dimensional scene on a plane, has to create the illusion of the respective positions occupied by objects in his composition. Overlapping is emphasized by the contrast in tones between objects, the shade and shadow between them. In the picture, we can see that the building is behind its doors.

Relative size/Scale relates the size of one object of an artwork in relation to another. In this Technic, the same object at different distances would look different in size, bigger when near, and smaller when far. In this artwork, the stairs that is uniform in size, becomes smaller when getting far. That illusion actually makes us believe that it is uniform in size.

Value defines the tonal ranges in an artwork, from light to dark. The color of objects, the texture of their surface and also their exposition to light will determine their values. If consider again the example of the stairs, we see that value is used to exhibit the grades of the stairs.

Hatching/Cross Hatching is the use of lines to show value. In this picture, the artist did not use a lot of this Technic to express the value of objects. However, in the front right while looking at the picture, we can see a little area in bold hatching. The dress of the person standing, looks to us like in hatching tone.

Shading is a smooth blending to show range of value. Most of the values in this artwork are expressed through shading. It looks like the artist did not use contour lines at all.

Linear Perspective is the use of converging lines that meet at a vanishing point. All shapes get smaller in all directions with increasing distance from the eye. In the building, we can see the effect of perspective. The horizontal lines at the bottom of the building are ascendant while those at the top are descendant. We can illustrate that by making horizontal lines on the pictures. We found out that the Horizon is almost at the top of the door, because the top line of the door is horizontal on the picture.