LEARNING TO DRAW.

LEARNING TO DRAW. Annalisa has been teaching art to children. She says that children tend to draw the same picture every time. A landscape might be a yellow circle in the upper right hand corner, often with a smiley face, two or three white clouds….. She tries to give them techniques that will let them break out of the formulas. Adam Gopnik had an article in the New Yorker (June 27) about his efforts at learning to draw. He has studied with Jacob Collins, who is the moving spirit of the Grand Central Academy of Art. Gopnik struggles against painting a concept rather than what he sees. He describes Bronzino drawings as “made of tacit compromises between agreed-on fictions and hard-sought facts.” Jacob describes aspects of some Bronzino drawings: “…he has this kind of model in his head, a formula.” Two techniques that Jacob gives to Gopnik to help him avoid the ideas in his head about the way things look are to focus on the angle at which two lines meet and to look for unrelated images within a subject. The example he gives is of a “snooty butler” under the breastbone of a model. Drawing the butler avoids mechanically drawing the breastbone.