Joseph's shiny new sketchbook

[JosephCow]

You might always favor developping the eye over the tool which is probably why you refuse to use any tool in the first place. 

That's not true at all. I'm really not sure what gave you that impression? Unless it was just from the last thing I said about your technique making it too easy, but that was just an expression. 

I feel that you very strangely mischaracterize me as like an overly-competitive purist. Let me explain more.

The last drawing I posted used practically every tool possible, pencil measurement, angles, plumb line, mirror, etc. It is measured. But I will tell you one thing which I have learned from experience that no article or video ever taught me: you can measure and measure, every point, every angle, draw it with a grid, and still be wrong. Hell, you can even trace something and have it look wrong. Use a hundred tips and tricks if you like, it doesn't guarantee you accuracy, and it certainly doesn't guarantee beauty (they aren't necessarily the same). Why? I honestly don't know, but if you try it you will see. And that is one reason why you cannot just take a photo, print it out and slap a grid on there. That's not what drawing is about anyway.

Accuracy is necessary for drawing in the same way that it is necessary for music. If you sit down at the piano, turn on the metronome, and play the notes of a song completely perfectly in time, that isn't necessarily good playing even though it was accurate. Great music is expressive, it gives subtle emphasis, and speeds and slows. However, a mechanically accurate performance is sure as hell a lot closer to what is wanted than a sloppy one where you constantly play wrong notes. 

And that is exactly how drawing is as well. This kind of drawing anyway.. You have to be able to play the right notes, and within those right notes can be found great expression, which is individual and varies from person to person. Two good artists can draw from the same subject and both come up with something completely different, and yet neither drawing is really inaccurate. Or if it is inaccurate, it is at least in service of some artistic purpose which merits deviating from the plain facts. 

For example, look at this study by Charles Bargue. Is it not good? The drawing is excellent. The edges of things vary all around, and the brushstrokes of the hair emphasize it's flow and movement. The form is also very clear, true enough to nature without needing to represent every minute fact. It's very expressive, but also accurate to a high degree, everything the right shape and size. It also looks to be done effortlessly, because he learned how to draw very very well. And so we are back at square one with learning to draw good. And unfortunately, though tools are very helpful, I do not in fact "already have a way to draw accurately", if only I would allow myself to use it. I think the issue of drawing is just far more complex than you might realize; it isn't something to be solved instantly by a plumb line. 




And actually I sort of think it does matter how you get to a result. We aren't factories trying to be as efficient as possible. To go with your smug math teacher analogy: There's a reason we learn to do multiplication and division by hand at first. And learn to solve equations without use of a calculator. Is it the fastest way to get the result? No, a computer could solve the equation in one second. But that's not the point. Our math teachers were wrong in the fact that we do usually have a calculator, but I think they were right in principle. What's the rush, anyway?