Draw Abstracted Form Merging with Landscape

This entry is part 2 of 7 in the series Class Notes
Sketch of anthropomorphized landscape form pencil Left: sketch of termite mound; right: anthropomorphized forms © 1991 Marilyn Fenn
Sketch of anthropomorphized landscape form Pencil Left: sketch of termite mound; right: anthropomorphized forms © 1991 Marilyn Fenn

Class notes, from Advanced Drawing Studio with Barbara Rossi, SAIC, 1991

“The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature—translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive and every work of art should be alive.”

– Hans Hoffman

Think about forms of nature that excite you: creatures, clouds, rocks, wood, trees, bones, water, fog.

Make lots of drawings of abstracted form merging with the landscape.

Hoffman’s “Search for the Real.”

The sound of machines; music.

Thorax (horse drowning in a sea of sadness).

To Create Form, Find an Equivalent for Life

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Drawing the Figure in Space
Painting by Hans Hoffman "The Golden Wall" Oil on Canvas 59½ x 71½" 1961
Painting by Hans Hoffman “The Golden Wall” Oil on Canvas 59½ x 71½” 1961

 

Class notes from Drawing the Figure in Space with Elizabeth Rupprecht, SAIC, 1991

Purpose: to create form; to find an equivalent for life.

Check out Frank Stella‘s “Working Spaces.” Exploring another area of cubism.

Cut up something and rearrange it within a grid. Implied floorplane.

Look at Hoffman‘s “Golden Wall” in the museum.

Look at Holbein for eyes, mouth. Look at Giacometti.

Nose and ear are often parallel, curved or straight, whatever.

View a gallery of drawings made in this way from this class.