A few weeks ago I touched on props and mannerisms and their importance in storytelling. I maintain that having a prop, a mannerism, or a story point to work with makes your drawing a lot easier (and more fun). Those things work for you like a tool works for you — a shovel, a drill, a vacuum cleaner, a spoon. When you have a job to do, the proper tool helps make the action complete. A prop (tool), be it a part of the body or its adornment or some story-related object, should be considered an integral and inherent part of any drawing. Look at the chapter on props again and notice how the first thing you see is not the anatomy or the details in those drawings, but rather the gesture — the appropriate use of the props.
Drawing is much like writing or communication by speaking. You have a story to tell and you choose only the most necessary and pertinent words to put over the idea. Detail is used only to add color and to solidify the image. Let’s say your neighbor’s house is on fire — you knock on his front door to see if he is aware of it — he opens the door and you say, “Great licks of flame dart into the sky. Glowing ashes are caught by the wind and drift into the surrounding brush. The trees in the back yard are bathed in an undulating orange glow, etc.” That may all be “anatomically” factual, even colorful, but it’s not communicating the proper story. Five well-chosen words would do the trick: YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE.
In drawing you can spend hours sketching in details like muscles, hairs, wrinkles, buckles, etc., and in so doing fail to tell the real story, or any kind of story at all. I say any kind of story for sometimes in class, the models don’t give you enough clues as to what they are portraying (if anything). That is when your sense of story (and imagination) comes into play. Your first impression should supply you with all you need to make a “complete” drawing. You not only spot the overall body language, but you automatically attach that to some fabricated story point. Some time ago (actually many times), I encouraged everyone to read, read, read. Reading different kinds of writings like novels, fiction, biography, essays, etc., sharpens your sense of drama and humor. When you draw, it can be thought of as if you were an author creating a sentence or a paragraph in a novel. If you have chosen to do a dramatic drawing be serious; if you decide to draw a humorous drawing then be funny, comical, witty, droll, amusing, satirical, ludicrous, or sidesplitting — whatever the situation calls for.
Study anatomy, yes, and study inanimate things. But when actually drawing, tear yourself away from the mere tool and make the drawing complete by adding story. That’s what gesture drawing is.
I have reproduced some of Milt Kahl’s drawings in this week’s “handout.” I’m not selling Milt as someone to copy or even emulate. No one wants to be Milt. No one wants to repeat the things he did. But to grasp the freedom with which he handled the human anatomy for his purposes is what we are interested in. Solutions to your problems do not lie in what has been done, but in fresh thinking, honest investigation, and a personal dedication. If you learn anything from this group of drawings it should be that knowledge of anatomy is imperative, and a creative use of the knowledge is even more imperative.
So for your viewing pleasure and to illustrate how the use of story and props can transcend mediocrity, here are some of Milt’s drawings from a scene in Aristocrats where Edgar, the butler, is smugly gloating over his guilt — his umbrella. As you glance from drawing to drawing, think of the hair, the cheeks, the eyebrows, the shoulders, etc., as props idiosyncratic of this particular character. He, like any human character, is built with the normal mixture of features (anatomy), but they go beyond what Bridgeman, Loomis, or Hogarth teach us the human male looks like. Humor, drama, and caricature have transformed them into the realm of gesture and fantasy. Milt was an excellent draftsman, but draftsmanship as applied here is not a photographic copy of a human character, it is the implementation of such knowledge to illustrate a story point as acted out by a particular character.
I encourage you artists who attend my drawing class to try to break away from a literal interpretation of the model’s poses and to caricature them as if you were animating a scene. I’m not here to teach you how to draw like Rembrandt, Hogarth, or Milt Kahl, I’m here to help you form a creative attitude toward drawing. All of you are unique individuals. To develop that individuality or that uniqueness to its fullest, you’ll need to study the tools of drawing and how to apply them in your own unique way to your work problems.
Resolve to make it an exciting quest, and in all ways it shall be.