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18 Feb 08 11:52

Hello, Fotini, welcome aboard! I wright in English so that others can pop in the conversation too. I am so glad to find a new Greek person in ArtProcess, I didn't introduce to myself.

Drawing, i.e line, is one of the most important elements of painting in my mind too. I think that line and texture are the basis. One can apply wichever combination of colours, that will of course lead the work to different expressive paths, but the essence of it all lies in drawing. In the way forms meet and interact with each other. Whether two or three dimentional.

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15 May 09 19:31

By chance I ran into this painting of Fotini and then found Maria’s comment on drawing which sounds very strange to me. I know that we had this discussion on drawing very often here but I have forgotten when and where. So let’s start again. A drawing is a drawing in the first place, done with pencils, pens, needles or charcoal. It’s a clearly separated section of art. Another clearly separated section is painting done with brushes or knifes and the technique is absolutely different. Drawing is an act of abstraction. The basis of drawing is following the outline of an object. This is what sculptors do, at least as I have learned it. The tension in the outlines shows what’s between them so there is no need of shadowing it with any kind of hatching. For example, if a sculptor draws a globe it will be a mere circle that contains everything that has to be said about a globe. Even when drawing the surface of an object you always have to look for borders: where does one hue begin and where does it end to put your line at the exact place.

Painting in the opposite deals with surfaces. In this painting is closer to nature as drawing. It’s less abstract then. In other words drawing always beginns with an outline whether it is a real outline or in the middle of an object. Painting compared with this is concentrated on surface areas. So drawing can be described as coming from the outline and going to the center while painting is growing from the center in the direction of the outline.

In nature there are no lines, not really, everything is surface. So a line is an abstraction what in the literal sense of the word means that everything that is not absolutely necessary is pulled away. A painter’s eye on the other hand pulles nothing away from what she sees but tries to get it all, the whole surface and transforms it into hues of paint. It’s not looking for an abstraction but for a metaphor.

Some fifty years ago I already had this kind of discussion with our beloved friend Hillel. It was about Reaissance = construction = line and Baroque = description = surface. There are other periods in art history that can be used to describe this contradiction. Sometimes it occurs in one and the same period like in the ninetieth century. For example Blake and Turner. Blake, whom I loathe, was about 25 years older than Turner, whom I adore, but nevertheless they were contemporary. Blake is called a painter but what he actually did were coloured drawings while Turner was a painter at it’s best. Try to put a line into one of his magnificent paintings and you will fail. One can start with the greeks, they had drawers who did vase „painting“ and painters that did paintings that are echoed in Pompeian murals. In Egypt you find drawings like in the tombs and paintings as on those wonderful lively mummy portraits of the latest (hellenistic) period. It seems to be like tide. You have draftmen and then painters and then draftmen again followed by painters and so on and so forth. Your favorite painter Maria, Goya, was both a powerful painter and an accurate draftsman as well. This is rare.

Well of course you need some drawing as a painter. But these lines are raw sketched outlines just for to know where to stop. But that’s not exactly drawing. It’s marking. Okay I admit that this is my very personal view but you will understand that I can only talk about what I think. Drawing for me is somewhat bloodless while painting is a very erotic bath in paint. Oh oh, I can already hear the outcry aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgggggg but nevertheless this is what I think and what is the basis of what I do. We can continue on this when your newest paintings are to be seen in a higher resolution. And for I love you Maria this will be a hard fight.

To end with I have to say that Fotini’s painting in my eyes is just what she has said: a combination of drawing and painting with NONE of them being superior. That’s interesting and well done.

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18 May 09 10:24

Indeed the trick worked this time. I’m so proud of me.

Well, it was my fault to try to make something objective what actually is a highly subjective thing. In a way ... and there Hillel’s absolutely right ... one can see everything as a drawing. It’s not only that one can draw with everything, one can use a stick to draw in the sand, you can use blood on your fingertip, you can draw even with your tongue on your lovers belly or with a lipstick on the mirror to say thank you for that and so on and so forth. When painting our hand makes kind of linear strokes with a brush or a spatula so in the end one can define the act of painting itself as drawing. The only method to avoid that is taking a bucket of paint, turn it upside down and splash the whole paint on the canvas. But this would be a bit difficult to call „painting“ in the narrow sense of the word. Hillel is also right ... and maybe this was what Maria was refering to and what I misunderstood ... when saying that without the training of drawing one can hardly do proper painting. It’s drawing that sharpens our eyes. The discipline we need to distinguish one thing from another, the different shapes of forms, the different hues of colour or the colours in general, all this comes from the training we get through drawing. So I could write an essay on the benefits from drawing as well so everyone would say oh, what happens now?

What I have in mind is a quite simple thing. And it is not objective as said at the beginning. So one can hardly discuss it with using sophisticated arguments. I am refering to the attitude you work with. It’s the difference between discipline and playing or the difference between thinking and feeling, between cold and warm. Do you hand yourself over to the paint and have a conversation with it or do you execute a picture you have in mind. Don’t take me wrong, I know that even when bathing in paint you have to controll what you do. So please do not become over-subtle again. From the view I want to show you one could say that even drawings could be „painted“ like Jenny Saville ones. Even Hillel’s wonderful Rabbi portraits seem to be a kind of painted drawings to me. Or take the work of Cy Twombley as an example. Are they drawings, are they paintings? I would say paintings.
So the distinction in drawings and paintings for me is an emotional thing one can hardly verify in terms of art theory. When looking at paitings my reaction is instinctive: this is a drawn one and that a painted one. And even in looking at drawings I make this distinction for indeed there are „painted“ drawings as said above. My distinction is emotional and irrational and it’s obvious that I prefer the „painted“ version. Maybe it simply has to do with my own developement as an artist. My „proficiency as a draughtsman“ ... as Hillel has put it ... caused a particular awe when discovering the power of painting. I got kind of over exited. Painting gave to me what I could never achieve with drawing alone. So that’s why I am a „painting“ freak.
Okay, I guess no one will follow or understand me so I will become very very sad and all of you have to come and console me.

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19 May 09 20:15

My comment on this is going to be very short for no other reason than that of being extremely tired and haven’t had anything to eat for twelve hours or so. Still, I cannot but interfere in this (well, Hanjo does know our weak points) to say that Hillel made a very successful summary of what I call drawing, in just one sentence: the weighing of hue and tone . To this I want to add that drawing, as I define it, refers to the whole organizing of the pictorial surface as far as composition and whatever hue or colour values are concerned. It is simply not merely about line. Cezanne for example is full of threads that connect his elements without being actual lines neither do they define contours. They can consist of one brushstroke here one there that continue one another visually and lead the eye into a harmonious journey through the picture. This is also what the old masters used to do when they had to organize a large mural for example. A leg at the bottom, right corner might be related to a brushstroke of light on an arm at the top left corner, which might be metres away but still makes a visual axis and so on and so forth. Sorry for this attempt to summarize this big matter but I really need some food, some alcohol and my sofa now.