A Return to Figure Drawing

Harry Beckhoff, cover illustration for Elks Magazine, April 1950. One of my very favorite illustrators. Magnificent two-color work for Collier’s in the late 30s and early 40s.

I have been teaching studio courses on the college level since I was a graduate student at the University of Nebraska in 1986. I should have had an apprentice semester but the lunatic painter who was assigned to the drawing class I TA’ed for that first fall was sufficiently erratic that when he just stopped coming to class I happily took it over. How could I do worse? I figured.

Illustrator uncredited, dramatis personae fiction illustration, The Illustrated Drum Song of the 1000 Year Colt, 1905.

For the first ten years of my career I taught a lot of drawing. Since 1997 I have taught in a design program, working with illustrators and designers on image-making. During that time I came to think about the act of drawing quite differently. In my book Stick Figures: Drawing as a Human Practice (Spartan Holiday Books in association with Norman Rockwell Museum, 2018) I wrote

Drawing has been positioned solely and securely within artistic ideology and practice. But the Beaux-Arts academies that claimed the primacy of drawing plaster casts and draperies have long since passed from relevance. The post–World War II painters, since retired, who taught drawing in American colleges and universities, were acculturated into abstract expressionism. The gestural fetish and psychological essentialism of ab-ex made its way into beginning drawing instruction, leading to the lionization of “the mark” as a badge of the self.

Drawing Session from plaster casts, Washington University, 1905.

Continuing: Institutionally, the practice of drawing remains an adjunct to art generally and painting specifically—even as art world careers continue to evolve away from traditional media and craft-based activities. People write and speak of the “post-studio artist.” It seems clear that we face a crisis of relevance in art education. Enrollments are down. 

Shunsai Toshimasa, Great Naval Maneuvers in Taketoyo Bay, 1890. A coming-out party for the modern, mechanized Japanese Imperial Navy. (Arrangement of figures highly formal) Intriguing example of theatrical handling of figures combined with grand, cinematic distances.

Meanwhile, design programs continue to grow, due to expanding opportunities and increased cultural currency. At this late date Beaux-Arts–style drawing training holds little relevance for graphic designers, interaction designers, and photographers, especially when indifferently delivered; many such students chafe at required two-semester first-year drawing sequences, standard in many BFA programs. Many contemporary students who end up as illustrators and cartoonists—often naturally given to abbreviation and simplification of form— emerge from traditional drawing experiences defeated, their…proclivities disallowed, even belittled. I have worked with many such students; my studio-teaching career has in many ways been devoted to rehabilitating them.  Chapter 5: “Drawing for Humans,” Section 5.11, Academic Drawing. Page 121.

Illustrator uncredited, Spring Fashions illustrations showing Butterick Pattern options in The Delineator, January 1918. (These are effectively ads, which suggests why the pictures are uncredited. Other illustrations in the magazine [owned by Butterick] are signed.) I included this as a reminder that clothing creates shape. Hands and feet are shrunk and delivered with abbreviation, keeping the viewer focused on the garment.

These trends have only intensified since in I wrote that passage in 2017-18.

And yet: I have also observed a different development which has concerned me. At Wash U we retooled our beginning drawing course along the lines that I advocated for in Stick Figures. The course is now taught in a tag-team format by an artist and an illustrator/designer. Different uses of drawing are explored across four units. The two-semester sequence was eliminated, and the other course slot given over to a digital studio course. As more design-friendly coursework has been implemented in the curriculum, there are fewer opportunities (both slots and actual courses) to pursue drawing for and in its own right. Illustration courses require plenty of image creation, but they are more focused on the design activity of solving problems. These experiences are crucial, but they help students get better at problem-solving, not drawing. Drawing improves through the practice of drawing, ideally in open-ended exploratory settings.

Al Parker, Expression of Love, fiction illustration (cropped) circa 1957

After pondering this last year I proposed a new class which I am teaching this spring: Advanced Figure Drawing: Studio and Site. Here is the course description:

 This course combines figure drawing in studio settings with drawing onsite at dance rehearsals, baseball games, etc. Students will learn to observe under variable conditions and work at shifting tempos, developing strategies to reliably create effective figurative pictures. Designed for illustrators and narrative artists who want to combine the authority of observation with abbreviation needed to work at speed. Methodologies explored to include diverse media, reference photography and video. Historical and contemporary examples will be engaged for comparison. Students to be evaluated on formal and thematic clarity of their visual work, depth of investment, and participation in critique.

We have only just begun work but I’m enjoying combining work with the model with exploration in the field.

Newspaper Rock, petroglyph site near the entrance to the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. Pecked into the desert varnish of Wingate sandstone by Fremont culture artists, followed by historic Ute and Anasazi Native American tribes. Photograph by D.B. Dowd, December 2022.

I’m attaching some images I showed on the first day in class. I introduced the concept of theatrical pictures as well as cinematic ones, which can be chiefly distinguished from one another on the basis of the z axis. Theatrical pictures tend to be shallow and arranged along a horizontal or x axis; we look across them. Cinematic pictures often rely on depth or a z axis; we plunge into such images and move through them, as if down a street or through a hallway. They operate sequentially.

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1770.

We talked about characters needing something do in such pictures. Everybody needs a verb.

We talked about schematic and hieratic approaches to representing people, which long predate “figure drawing” as we use the term. I’m hopeful that we can approach the figure in an expansive, broadly useful way as we move through the course.