Great post. I would have liked to see the images in this post but the links all appear to be broken. If the OP is here could you repair the links?
Based on the text alone, this strikes me as right on the mark.
An interesting bit of history: the New York Academy (which still exists, in another form) was back in the 1980s an unaccredited graduate school and the premiere training ground for classical figurative drawing and sculpture, which were otherwise in much neglect in the Art World. From what I have heard (second-hand), there were two competing schools within the Academy at the time, one group favoring “perceptual” drawing (essentially the skill of copying a 2D image, or seeing a model as a 2D image and then drawing what you literally see); and the other favoring “conceptual” drawing, the skill of understanding how objects in three-dimensional world generate the two-dimensional projection we see, and then drawing from an understanding of that underlying cause. I think the perceptual approach is typical of photo-realist painters (and most present day portrait artists), and the conceptual approach was typical of Renaissance painters.
An anecdote I love that illustrates the contrast is: apparently one day when the class was drawing a long pose the model took a break, and when she came back the pose was slightly different such that all the shadows changed. The Perceptual students complained, whereas a Conceptual student countered: actually we should change the lights every 15 minutes. Then we can see what is actually there, and draw it from a better understanding.
For an example of what drawing looks like when approached conceptually, see the drawings of Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585):
Great post. I would have liked to see the images in this post but the links all appear to be broken. If the OP is here could you repair the links?
Based on the text alone, this strikes me as right on the mark.
An interesting bit of history: the New York Academy (which still exists, in another form) was back in the 1980s an unaccredited graduate school and the premiere training ground for classical figurative drawing and sculpture, which were otherwise in much neglect in the Art World. From what I have heard (second-hand), there were two competing schools within the Academy at the time, one group favoring “perceptual” drawing (essentially the skill of copying a 2D image, or seeing a model as a 2D image and then drawing what you literally see); and the other favoring “conceptual” drawing, the skill of understanding how objects in three-dimensional world generate the two-dimensional projection we see, and then drawing from an understanding of that underlying cause. I think the perceptual approach is typical of photo-realist painters (and most present day portrait artists), and the conceptual approach was typical of Renaissance painters.
An anecdote I love that illustrates the contrast is: apparently one day when the class was drawing a long pose the model took a break, and when she came back the pose was slightly different such that all the shadows changed. The Perceptual students complained, whereas a Conceptual student countered: actually we should change the lights every 15 minutes. Then we can see what is actually there, and draw it from a better understanding.
For an example of what drawing looks like when approached conceptually, see the drawings of Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585):