OCA Learning Blog - Drawing 1: Assignment 5 - Research Point

Giacometti

Giacometti Standing Woman 1958-9

Giacometti Caroline 1965

Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and print maker. He is known for his distinctive elongated figures both in sculpture and paintings.

His portraits are as distinctive as his sculptures. He would repeatedly draw over the same lines and rework lines while erasing others until the paper would become worn underneath. He typically would draw his sitter front on and and use a rapid energetic technique encircling the eyes with heavy lines.It looks like he has drawn the figure using a continuous line as in this exercise, possibly not looking at the paper much while drawing or lifting the pen from the surface. His lines are full of energy and action e.g the lines describing the sitters neck in the drawing below (Portrait d'homme) are very expressive and appear to have been carried out in seconds with little effort but are hugely descriptive.

Giacometti Portrait d'homme

Giacometti Femme debout et tête d'homme, 1960-63,

Giacometti Silvio 1950

Giacometti Tete d'homme I (Diego) 1964

Portrait De Jean Genet 1955

Giacometti - James Lord

The above portrait of James Lord took Giacometti 18 straight days of sitting to complete. He reworked and reworked the figure till he was happy. The sitter, James Lord wrote a book about his experience and Giacometti's technique. I've not read it but it's definitely on the list for the future.

From looking on the web it seems that Giacometti had a specific technique for drawing and painting figures. I've not been able to find out specifically what this was but he was certainly interested in the space around the sitter and how they are placed in it. He often included horizontal and vertical lines in the background which seem to place the figure in the setting but with no detail. I would definitely like to find out more about this and try to understand what he was trying to achieve.

Hockney

David Hockney (born 1937) is described as one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. He is most famous for his Pop art paintings of the 60s and 70s predominantly concentrating on figures but recently he has become known for his large landscape works and his use of digital media to create works of art. He currently has a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts of new landscape works. This exhibition includes vivid large-scale paintings inspired by the East Yorkshire landscape and a display of his iPad drawings. Recently the OCA held a study day at this exhibition and there is a report of this on the website.

I hadn't really seen many of Hockney's drawing before and I found them quite interesting in their style. I found many examples of "contour drawing" style where he has described the outlines of the figure but there is no shading. They couldn't be more different from Giacometti's style of over laying lines on top of each other and never erasing anything. I find Hockney's style to be quite deliberate and thought out which is very different from Giacometti. Interestingly from what I can gather, while Giacometti appeared to work quickly and very spontaneously and Hockney seems more rigid and slow, Hockey is a very fast worker while Giacometti would work and rework and spend a lot of time pondering his drawings.


Hockney - Charles Alan 1969 ink 17x14 in

Hockney - Sheridan sleeping and cushion 1968

These drawings have pared the figures down to their essential elements. Small lines can describe the fold in clothing perfectly and uninteresting sections are just left blank.

Later Hockney starts to draw portraits with more detail but sometimes keeps the work on the face but leaves the rest of the body with very little detail.