December 30, 2017

Drawn in the Argos Gallery of Santa Fe:

Altered in PaintsChainer and Photoshop

Recently I heard an artist in El Paso talk about the difference between the French and the Italian approach to life drawing.  That disparity surfaced again in some conversations in Santa Fe, but I cannot find anything online that discusses that distinction.

I am assuming that sight-size drawing is from the French school, emphasizing the light on the surface of the figure.  And that anatomical drawing comes from the Italian school, working from the muscles.  To me, that seems to be the difference between drawing from the outside in, vs from the inside out.

Then Daniel mentioned that the Germans had a different approach in the Munich Academy.  I'm not sure what the difference is, but many of the Taos Society artists studies in Munich, including my favorite E Martin Hennings, as well as William Victor Higgins, Walter Ufer and Joseph Henry Sharp.

The Frank Reilly method (as well as the Loomis method) of drawing from the Art Student's league also came up.

After doing some Google searches, I found some different opinions as well:

• Russian revival
• Draw the Figure blogspot
• Long pose drawing

All this surfaces as I was trying to write about my approach to life drawing in my upcoming self-published book. I pointed to Mayan drawing as an influence, and now am beginning to see how different that is from European approaches.