🎨 Artwork/ Portrait drawings (3) // First steps towards abstraction! // blast from the past
After learning proportions of the face, tone modeling and everything to do just the right thing that most people like, I deliberately abandon that kind of transference of the reality. It was because of those lines, all kinds of them ...they attracted me, became point of my interest so at the end they started to be the most important core of my drawings. Line became an instrument with one I could express something else, something that is not the object itself, something what is dancing and playing inside of me, life itself.
That all started to be visible in this one self portrait:
I like it cause lines look like they are knitted, especially those on the right side, and those above the left eye. The face is still visible, this is not true abstraction yet.
I tried to do something similar when I was doing graphics. Next two works were made in cooper etching technique:
In this first one the line is very expressive in its essence. It took over the drawing completely. It is floating, jumping, dancing, yelling. And there is visible a triangle composition, which is by itself static/grounded so completely in the contrast with wild freedom of the line. That was a good combination.
If you think this is just some scribble and that it is easy to do, you are wrong! I had to do many of these kind of drawings to choose a good one, where every single line is connected, playing together, cooperating so it could in the end succeed in doing a good song, a good play,look like an excellent trained show.
Here is another one of that series:
This one has less wild lines than the previous one, but if I didn't show you first that wild one, maybe this would seem to be very expressive. It is more calm and more I like it. Here is also a triangle obvious but again I couldn't do it without contrasting something.... so on the contrary there is that rhythm of repeating diagonals, giving dynamics to the whole work in its overall impression.
This one drawing ...
...... bears no strength like previous shown artworks but is interesting to me now, when I see how I ignored the face almost completely.
Now, when I think back, I remember one teacher told me many times: 'What you are drawing is not a woman/man/ whatever is standing as a model'. Like he was deliberately teaching me to become an abstract painter at the end. Not all his students go for his teaching, but I accepted it.
This last one, although not the best one, is my favorite self portrait :
Don't tell me you do not see a face! :)
My starting point actually was a face, there are indication of eyes, mouth and nose. And there is a hair, and shoulder also. So this is not 100% abstraction, especially because of my face as a starting point. What I wanted to do here is to do some play with the line again. You can see repeating of the short lines on the left side in different directions, and there is similar repeating of thicker line on the bottom, and some other different shaped lines all going somewhere up, lifting itself like a breath, or wind blowing up up up somewhere, like some idealistic thoughts, freely floating in a space with no boundaries. And there were also some romantic feeling of beauty that was carrying me when I was drawing this one. In general it is simple, having some rhythm, again a triangle, diagonals, semi-circle.. Later, in one point I started to express myself trough semi-circle and semi-oval compositions instead of triangle. Why did I abandoned triangle actually? Hmmm ...this made me to think a little bit... It is really a good thing to make reflections, analyze our own work from time to time...
....
... so it is to be continued!
I made a post with no color today, I have to make it up the next time!
@andrijana