Portrait drawing

Portraits: Take a look at all periods with written help

More pictures, resources and links with written information:

Raphael pencil/ silverpoint

First of all, what is silver point?

When we draw today, we draw with graphite which is a soft material mixed with clay to give us marks that transfer to paper when pressed in with the point or end of a pencil. In previous years, pencils (or the stylus: https://www.jacksonsart.com/en-us/zecchi-lead-stylus-for-drawing-10mm-diameter) used lead as this is a soft metal too but it is also a poisonous metal and so, it was dropped from pencil production, in favour of the cheaper and safer graphite.

Graphite wasn't available for pencils until it was first mined in northern England in the late 18th century. That means that it was far too late for most old master artists.

Of pure metals, lead is the only metal soft enough to make lines in ordinary paper; all other metals will leave a mark only if the support is prepared in advance with a slightly abrasive coating. A stylus made of silver (usually) or another metal is then drawn over the surface, and tiny flecks of the metal are pulled off to form a delicate gray line.

Depending on the support, metalpoint drawing is very difficult to erase and requires great precision on the part of the artist – a challenge like the sonnet form to a poet. A great deal of time was spent in the process of getting things ready for the drawing. This involved the careful preparation of the ground, often requiring several layers brushed onto the paper by hand.

On putting on an exhibition of Raphael's drawing at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, DrawingBen Thomas said: ‘We wanted the focus to be insistently on the drawings, to see them less as documents of commission, but rather as a direct way of getting inside Raphael’s creative process. We set out to unlearn certain art-historical assumptions. Instead of looking at the drawings as if they were explained by the end product — the painting — we saw them as moments in time in which the artist is trying to discover the potential for a creative act.’ For more visit this page and you can download the extensive teacher notes for the exhibition which will help you understand Raphael and his drawings.

Andrea De Sarto

Was Del Sarto flawless?

Are any of these drawings better than the others?
Do any of them have weaker elements?
Do they have personality?
Do they convey drama?

There are two often repeated myths about Andrea Del Sarto, firstly that his art was without fault, and secondly, that he was weak and deficient in character. This comes from the famous book 'The lives of the artists' written by Vasari and was further reinforced by Heinrich Wölfflin, who curiously declared that although Andrea was ‘among the talents of the highest order, he is the only one who seems to have had a defect in his moral constitution’.

In truth, neither of these two statements are really true but they are typical of the stories that get blindly repeated about artists without any evidence or checking (or in the faultless category, any looking) and taken and repeated as 'God-sent truth'.

The real message is that you have to make your own mind up and in the case of the drawings, have a look for yourself.

It is true that today we only have a fraction of the thousands of drawings that he made. His assistant was robbed after Del Sarto's death by some jealous painters and his work was taken and destroyed.

Unlike Raphael, Del Sarto preferred to work in soft chalks. He rarely, if ever, used soft washes to heighten or create areas of lighter or mid tones was common practice amongst other artists of the day.

Del Sarto liked to use red or black chalks and these don't seem to be used for any specific purpose - it might be that they were just what he had to hand. Some say that the black chalks are made later on in his career but again there is evidence of it used in earlier work.

Sometimes, the two can be seen on the same paper but they are never used in combination as later artists would do such as Watteau below.

You could make a comparison of the uses of materials between Raphael, Del Sarto and Watteau
You could compare the different materials of pencil, chalk and prepared paper and crayons and evaluate how they impact on your work

Annibale Carracci

Following on from Mannerism (which itself followed on from the high Renaissance), Carracci learned all about the linear drawing style of the masters like Raphael and Leonardo but, he also looked at the softer-edged painters from Venice like Titian who produced more blurred edges and blocks of colour for shapes.

At the same time, there was a break in taste between people who wanted to follow Caravaggio and his use of naturalism away from the distortions of Mannerism and those who opposed this route.

Carracci was taken up by the opposition to Caravaggio and used an alternative. This contest has meant that in retrospect, Caravaggio has been remembered more and Carracci less. The naturalism and immediacy of expression found in the drawing of Carracci have been comparatively overlooked and the softer edges, the expressive mark-making and the soft chalks used in combination with washes of light tone, are ignored by the wider art audiences.

Some questions for you to answer - and provide evidence of evaluation for your sketchbook

Is this assessment of being less than Caravaggio fair?
Is Carracci as interesting to you as the other artists on this page? If so, say why?
What can you learn from his techniques?
Does he appeal to a modern audience?
Are the works on show here studies of real people?
Do they have a psychological character? Do you feel that you can understand their personalities or moods from these drawings?

Watteau: three crayons

Watteau was a Rococo French artist, you can find him on the mind map of Rococo artists here. Remember, these are best looked at on a computer and do not work so well with phones and tablets

Watteau was a Rococo French artist: Defining the Rococo term

Watteau was a Rococo artist and he is often described as painting in that style but the term 'Rococo' involves other forms of art too so you should see what he does in that context.

Dictionary definition of Rococo

'denoting furniture or architecture characterized by an elaborately ornamental late baroque style of decoration prevalent in 18th-century continental Europe, with asymmetrical patterns involving motifs and scrollwork.'

What are the four main characteristics of Rococo?

Elaborate ornamentation - lots of ornament and decoration
Asymmetrical values - not balanced and no central line of mirroring of decoration
Pastel colour palette - no strong colours
Curved or serpentine lines - serpentine means 'snake-like' for example, meandering like a snake's movement

Aspects

Rococo is a French word meaning “out of style, old-fashioned” and is a humorous distortion of rocaille “pebble-work, shellwork,” which was done to excess in some 18th-century art, furniture, and architecture.

The three crayons

Trois crayons (English: "three chalks") is a drawing technique using three colours of chalk: red (sanguine), black, and white. The paper used may be a mid-tone such as grey, blue, or tan. Among numerous others, French painters Antoine Watteau and François Boucher drew studies of figures and drapery 'aux trois crayons'. The technique was, most notably, pioneered and popularised by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens.

'Aux deux crayons' uses only two colours, frequently black and white, as seen in many of Pierre-Paul Prud'hon's drawings.

What you could do

Make some drawings on prepared paper. You could stain paper a light brown colour or light blue with a little ink and water and a sponge. You could experiment with pink and green colours too. You could then link this to the different coloured grounds as used by Constable in his Brighton painting sketches. (Pink, Brown, Blue, Green etc)

Use three values: one for the dark tone, such as a black and then one for the mid tone - a brown or grey or pink and then finally, one for the highlight. This final value should be white.

You could choose to do it all in one medium or mix them up: for example, a highlight is often effective if applied as watercolour or gouache (gouache is watercolour with china clay added to make it go flat and opaque)

Suggested media

Three coloured pencils
Three crayons
Three chalks
Three inks
Three gouache colours

Mixing it up

Don't just try one set of these but work through each of them and then use them in combination to find what you like to use best and what best suits your purpose.

Very important:

Remember to evaluate each drawing and media that you make and use.

The next steps would be to consider how to use these drawings as a basis to move into painting.

Reflect on Watteau

What do you like about his work?
How is it Rococo in spirit?
What do you think of his imagery and subject matter?
What techniques from his coloured drawings can you use in your work?

Ingres and the Camera Lucida

What is a Camera Lucida?

A camera lucida is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists and microscopists.

The camera lucida performs an optical superimposition of the subject being viewed upon the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist sees both scene and drawing surface simultaneously, as in a photographic double exposure. This allows the artist to duplicate key points of the scene on the drawing surface, thus aiding in the accurate rendering of perspective. (more at Wikipedia)

What Ingres used

Ingres (1780-1867), most likely used the camera lucida, an optical artist's aid invented by an English physician named William Wollaston in 1807.

According to the Hockney-Falco Thesis, Ingres used a Camera Lucida to do his incredible pencil portraits. Part of the evidence is in the drawing itself. Note the quick yet confident strokes in the clothing. Tracing an image leads to loose yet precise lines, difficult to do solely by eye.

Getting one today

Here is an example that you can buy today which explains the device and its principles in detail and with image and video examples

https://neolucida.com/how-it-works

Ingres and the Camera Lucida

Asking the question: did Ingres use a camera Lucida? The Independent answers 'yes' and suggests that 'one of our greatest artists' (Hockney they say) considers the secret history of the mechanical aid for drawing:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/arts-did-ingres-use-a-camera-1102255.html

You need to sign up for a free account to read this

The Washington Post gives you the same story for nothing - right here

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/030220.htm

Hockney argues that it was not just Ingres but a whole list of other old master painters who 'cheated' with this device and could only have made the work they did with it.

This argument was an exhibition at the National Gallery but it was not universally accepted. Here is one strong and compelling argument against this line:

https://www.greggkreutz.com/new-page

Decide for yourself:

Did he use the camera Lucida?
Did others do so too?
What is the real evidence for and against this argument?
Does it matter?
If you get an interesting image on the painting does the means of manufacture matter - is it 'cheating'?
What could you use to equate to the camera Lucida? (Projector, photo screen, light board etc)
Remember, you need to make art but you must add evidence of critical reflection and evaluation too, these questions will help with that.

Oskar Kokoshka and expressive drawing

Alberto Giacometti

Tate Modern retrospective exhibition of Giacometti

Look at the exhibition from the Tate of Giacometti's work from 2017 here. The page opens with a video of Giacometti painting live.

The show featured his sculptures, drawings, lithographs and painting. On this page, you can see all of the guidance text for each room in the exhibition.

Lucien Freud

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