the Unstuck Diaries

I agree it's wrong - insulting, even - for people to say "I can't draw" without having put in any effort to learn, as if being able to draw is a completely natural talent requiring no effort at all. People aren't expected to be able to play the piano without putting in a bit of work, are they?
However, there are many people who want to be able to draw and some of whom put in a lot of time and effort - and their drawings still aren't very good. And there are people like me who enjoyed drawing as a child but who don't put in the effort because they feel that with a lot of effort they would get a bit better, but not enough to be very rewarding.
I think that good drawing requires the ability to see the shapes - which I know can partly be learned - and good hand/eye co-ordination - which I know can partly be learned - and some techniques of shading etc - which again can be learned - and a willingness to put in lots and lots of work, learning about anatomy etc for life drawing.
But without natural aptitude, talent, creativity, whatever we call it, the drawings will never have the "wow" factor which I think this drawing has.

depends on what you mean by "wow factor" for most this is "photo-realism," but often with all that stuff, you might as well take a photo. there have a been so many artists, indeed brilliant painters (painting can hide a bit of poor drawing, but drawing is so raw it's harder to fool the viewer's perception), who one could say had little to no "natural" capabilities, but the desire and the passion (however restrained) has resulted in absolutely brilliant drawings. cezanne was such an artist and believe it or not delacroix was considered "a poor draughtsman" but would you rather look at the frenzy of activity and intent in a delacroix, or the photographic lifelessness of an ingres?

however, it does take time to develop that voice. even when in the act of drawing, most people think a painting takes a couple of sittings and a drawing is done in like twenty minutes.

Interesting that, isn't it: "the wow factor" - is a subjective term. Yes, for some it is the "oh my god how did they do that?" comment about something technically clever, for others it's a more spiritual thing.

I agree, Ingres was a technician, a good one, but he didn't have that spark everytime, he didn't always have IT. He was a Master in that he was trying to create the perfect likeness and eliminate the brushstroke [when he finally achieved this he didn't get praise so much as taken to jail for "being in league with the devil"]

Uglow was a technician and we can marvel at his achievements, though sometimes the subject is awkward and cold. Part of his attraction for me is his structure [not his picture composition]and colour. For passion we need to go to De Kooning. Maybe they are the latterday Ingres and Delacroix?

the thing about ingres is weird, i didn't mean to disparage him, i do think he's an artist of integrity (though for some reason many don't?). i was saying that somehow his incredible attention to detail can make his drawings feel a bit lifeless. i don't know if it's because he bothered to draw the engraving on the sitter's ring or what. however, this "obsessive-ness" with which we discredit ingres with, we also applaud in artists like lucian freud ("oh look, he painted every bloody chimney pot in primrose hill behind his sitter")

i consider de kooning too far into the abstract side of figurative abstraction to adequately compare with euan uglow. instead i would probably consider david bomberg as the antithesis of uglow. however, both artists where doing what i think all (figurative) artists have an obligation to do and that is to represent things as they appear to them to the absolute best of their ability. i know about a billion people would say something like "it's not all about visual appearance, as cezanne said 'you paint with your hands not with your eyes'" but ultimately the viewer has a relationship or reaction to a painting with their eyes.

jeez, i'll start to sound like a uglow champion once again, but his obsession was a unique and interesting one and your right, it's about structure as a primary concern as his instructor coldstream said "putting things in their right places." however, uglow took it to a fascinating extreme. for example, being an accomplished carpenter, he often built "sets" for paintings. the table that the woman lies on in "root five nude" was actually constructed so that the distance from uglow's eye to the table was at equal positions through the length of it, meaning it was a concaved curve in reality that appears flat because of perspective distortion. nude from twelve vertical positions solves the same problem only vertically.

the reason his paintings seem cold and awkward sometimes is that he had the idea before hand, often plotted the points on the canvas, built the set, then tried out up to twelve models to see if they would fit the plots he'd constructed.

however, instead of coldness, to me this represents an equal of not greater passion (though it's for subject or idea, rather than materials) than the painter with who loads a brush with paint and slaps around a gesture drawing a couple of hundred times.

shit, i can't even remember what started this!