In partnership with the Tate, The Times is promoting a traditional
skill. It is inviting young artists between the ages of 11 and 18 to pick up
their pencils and do a drawing. Enter a drawing of yourself and win the
chance to see your work displayed at Tate Modern The weekend painter is too
often treated as a figure of fun. We all recognise the cliché of the
enthusiast with his portable easel and unfolding paint-box, his Thermos and
sandwiches, his knotted handkerchief and damp socks. But professionals from
Paul Gauguin to Grayson Perry have all been indebted to such humble
beginnings. The former was a stockbroker and family man who for years could
only dabble part-time in his artistic hobby. The latter proves that the
skills of a suburban evening class can be lent a Turner prizewinning
panache.
So sharpen your pencils. The great advantage of drawing is that you don’t need
anything more sophisticated to begin. You don’t need studio space or
stretched canvases or glamorous models. You can just start. Inspiration is
everywhere. Rembrandt found it in his own face staring back from the mirror;
Bonnard grew obsessed with his wife’s bottom; Van Gogh made do with his
boots; and the American Jim Dine produced a whole series of drawings based
on nothing more thrilling than his dressing gown.
Drawing, it seems, is a fundamental human response to the world. From the
prehistoric animals scratched on to cave walls to the graffiti that Banksy
stencils on to our modern-day streets, the instinct remains untempered. You
only have to provide a toddler with a wax crayon to see it. The pleasure of
drawing is universal: from the scrolling fluidity of Chinese brush and ink
through the intricate complexities of Islamic manuscripts to the symbolic
patterns of Australian Aborigines.
In Western art history, drawing has been fundamental to the development of our
techniques, from the learning of perspective through the study of anatomy to
the exploration of the creative freedoms pioneered by Modernism. Think of
Jackson Pollock’s huge splatter fests, for instance. Are they really
anything more than vast drawings that have gone on the rampage?
The idea of disegno was enshrined at the heart of the Renaissance.
Think of that great Florentine perfectionist Michelangelo. His drawings are
far more than merely preparatory studies. They are more than demonstrations
of superlative proficiency. Line was the leash of Michelangelo’s
imagination. His drawings reveal a mind at full stretch.
“Draw Antonio, draw, and don’t waste time,” he urged one of his pupils. The
skills of the draughtsman, he knew, were the foundation of talent. And there
have been many to agree. “Drawing is the probity of art,” declared the great
NeoClassicist Ingres. “One must keep on drawing . . . Draw with your eyes
when you cannot draw with a pencil.”
Or think of Picasso. His graphic powers lie at the core of his immense
creativity. You can feel them like a skeleton supporting his vision. You can
see them in series such as his magnificent Vollard Suite. These black
lines unscrolling across the white paper may appear quite simple. But
nothing in art – and least of all when it comes to Picasso – is ever black
and white. These sheets are a symbolic labyrinth.
Even Monet, the famous colourist, was a draughtsman, it turns out. He may have
worked hard to promote himself to the public as the supreme Modernist
painter, as the great Impressionist translating the luminous world that fell
on to his retina straight into shimmering paint, but (as a current
exhibition at the Royal Academy shows) he in fact produced sketches and
drawings and pastels throughout his career. They appear to have served in
some way to define his vision. “Drawing is putting a line round an idea,”
Matisse said.
It is only through drawing the world around us that we learn to see it. Sit
down and start sketching something as basic as an apple, if you want to find
out for yourself. See how quickly you are overwhelmed by the subtleties of
shape, line and shadow.
Drawing need not be about the finished product. It can be about learning a
certain type of attentiveness. “What is drawing?” asked Van Gogh. “It is
working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between
what one feels and what one can do.”
“What I have not drawn I have never really seen,” declared Frederick Franck,
the author of The Zen of Seeing. “And when I start drawing an
ordinary thing I realise how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.”
Now we live in the age of the camera. Where Hogarth, on suddenly spotting a
face that fascinated him, would have made a quick pencil sketch (on his own
thumb nail, often – the origin of the thumbnail sketch), today’s artist
could more easily take a quick snapshot. But the type of seeing that you do
when making a drawing is quintessentially different from that surveillance
carried out by the electronic eye. It is not simply about recording, about
capturing details. It is about trying to see how all these details
interrelate.
Where the lens breeds a mood of detachment, drawing forges a sense of
connection. “You learn a landscape by drawing it,” declared Dörer, “and you
come to care for it with a lover’s devotion.”
Keith Haring believed: “Drawing is still basically the same as it has been
since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives
through magic.” That is why drawing should still remain an important part of
any art-school training. We may be living in the postWarholian world of the
factory, in a time when the conceptual is fashionable and it is sufficient
for an artist to come up with an idea and then leave it to his minions to
put it into production, but the way of seeing that drawing fosters cannot be
dismissed. Drawing brings us face to face with the wonder of the visible. It
renders the world constantly fresh. It is the driving force of the new. And
to practise it is not to remain imprisoned in academic convention. It is to
point in the direction of the path that leads to freedom.
But drawing well is hard work. “It is only by drawing often, drawing
everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you will discover that
you have rendered something in its true character,” said Pissarro. There are
many hours of heavy labour to be put in. Maybe this is why it is dropping
from the art-school agenda. In an age of quick-fix solutions it looks like a
long way round.
Leonardo believed that anyone with a modicum of ability could, with enough
practice and discipline, learn to draw like him. But the amount of
application he demanded was vast. And what about the weekend artist? Is it
worth it? Will he ever make it?
Ruskin didn’t think that it mattered. To him it was just as important for
young people to know and appreciate the art of others as to learn to make it
themselves. Through struggling to learn to draw, he suggested, they would
learn a greater respect for the art of the past.
So, it seems, that whatever your level of accomplishment, your efforts will
not be wasted. Drawing is worth it, whether you go with Ruskin, who believed
that “you cannot possibly draw the leafy crown of Melancholia too often”, or
with Picasso, who thought that to draw you just had to “close your eyes and
sing”.
How to enter The Tate Times Challenge
All entries must be drawn with pen, pencil or fixed charcoal on A4 paper only.
Entrants must be between the ages of 11 and 18.
Before you begin, go to timesonline.co.uk/drawing
and
www.tate.org.uk/drawing for information on masterclasses and advice from
the experts.
The closing date is Saturday, April 14. The best self-portraits will be chosen
by our panel of judges, which includes the Turner prizewinner and Times
columnist Grayson Perry, the Times chief art critic Rachel
Campbell-Johnston, Anna Cutler, head of education at Tate Modern, Stephen
Farthing, Professor of Drawing at Chelsea College of Art, and Joanne
Bernstein, curator of the UBS collection.
The best entries will be included in a special display at Tate Modern during UBS
Openings: The Long Weekend, an arts festival which runs from May 25-28.
Send entries to Tate Times Drawing Challenge, Communications
Department, Tate, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG.
