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Marshall Glasier on Drawing from the model
One of my drawing teachers at the Academy during the late 1960s was Marshall Glasier. His classes were both enjoyable and helpful. He talked almost the whole time and filled the drawing sessions with humor and insight. At one point, he distributed a mimeographed handout- pre-xerox.
Below are some excerpts, taken from that original copy, which I still have, and which I have copy distributed to thousands of my own students, in the 27 years I have been teaching.
The paper is the battleground. See the whole sheet at once, and visualize the figure. Sense the white spaces outside the figure. Grasp the concept of the model centered. Accept in your mind's eye, the impossible problem of getting it down at once.
The belief "it can't be done' harbors the potential drawing. At first, the mind cannot believe the drawing possible. The mind can never make a drawing. It is the hand that must do it. Once the mind rejects the ridiculous impossibility of getting it down at once, the hand becomes free to create the necessary relationship beteween model and paper.
You make a wrong line to make a right one. Keep the line you first put down, even if it is wrong, for it makes the right line possible. When your pencil discovers a shoulder, it is a discovery for all your following shoulders. Even as you work on the details of the foot, you have not lost the experience of the shoulder. When you go back to the shoulder to check it, you have the memory of the former moment, and your hand can correct it in relationship to the whole.
Drawing is a Ceremony, a Performance, a Ritual:
It shall be the best thing you can do at a given moment. It is the sustained emotion of the whole self at work. (You must) unbutton the straight-jacket of the intellect, and free the hand to begin the ceremony which will envelop the whole self, and not the mind alone.
How is a class today, different from the past?
Today we have a greater fund of knowledge. We do not shudder before the old master's drawings. We use them as reference material to enrich our own ideas of beauty.
When does the break-through in modern art occur? This is the point when you chance all. It will come from a steady, growing accumulated effort. When you are ready, take the leap. Do not try to create before you have learned to draw.
Keep the hawk's eye view! Do not draw too close to your paper. Stand back. Get the sense of what goes on.
The art is in the model...
Sing if you can. Try to enoble the figure. Lift it from reality. Give it the life giving line. A good drawing looks easy. The hard work never shows. It should look as if it were done at once. It has perfection to which nothing can be added or taken away.
Count on accumulated effort. From one drawing to the next, you get back to where you left off. When you feel ill, or grow bored, do not give up. The time has arrived when you are learning. Stick it out. When the mood passes, you usually come up with surprises. Work your way out of the voids, sterilities. Sometimes you lose contact and go back two steps to gain one.
...Do not lose...that part of you, which is a child ( the curious quest for discovery in a world of wonder.) Remember, every artist lives every artist's life, only in his own way.
Once you learn how to draw, no one can take it from you. You can invent and make your own discoveries, but you will sense when you make a good line, for you will feel right. You will work towards a work of art and know when you have achieved that, for which you have set out. Everyone lives to surpass himself.
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