HOW PEOPLE START TO DRAW
Children start to draw by scribbling, even those who become the greatest painters. As soon as children deem that one of their scribbles stands for something, representational art has begun. Sometimes it may be hard for grown-ups to work out what the scribbles mean, but children can have very definite ideas about what their scribbles represent. As time goes by, these scribbles become increasingly precise, and so do their meanings as representation. Soon children learn to draw a rough circle, the first shape that can be used to represent an object with bulk as well as length.
The psychologist, Rudolf Arnheim, referred to this shape as ‘the primordial circle’. In the illustration above, the child has used two circles in order to represent eyes, and placed then within another circle which represents a head.
The molecule shown is proline.
A simple shape (the primordial circle) may be used to represent to a great variety of subjects. In this case, particles.
Arnheim wrote:
Rudolf Arnheim (1904 – 2007) Art and Visual Perception (1954).
“The circle is the first organised shape to emerge from the more or less uncontrolled scribbles.
In the molecular models of the chemists, particles are represented as balls; and ball-shaped were the atoms of which, according to the Greek atomists, the world was made. Just as the adult uses this most general shape when no further specification is needed or available, a young child in his drawings uses circular shapes to represent almost any object at all: a human figure, a house, a car, a book, and even the teeth of a saw…”
(see pictures below).
The primordial circle is used to represent a variety of objects, even the teeth of a saw.
ANDREW LOOMIS ON STARTING TO DRAW
the American illustrator,
Andrew Loomis began his book, “Fun with a Pencil”, by encouraging the reader to draw the same primordial circle which we all start from. The rest of the book elaborates on this circle by stages until it forms the basis of the most sophisticated of drawings.
HERE WE GO! I promised you that all you need to know, to start this book, is how to draw a lopsided ball. Whatever shape you draw can be used as a foundation for a funny face. Do the best you can, even if the ball looks more like a potato.
Andrew Loomis, “Fun with a Pencil” (1939)
BUILDING ON THE FRAMEWORK
Robert Witt collection.
The figure is built up in the same way as the Loomis figures, with lines around volumes. Look at the kneecaps and the muscles of the legs, for example.
DRAWING ON THE BASIS OF EGG-SHAPED VOLUMES
Degas’s drawing is constructed on the same principles as the others on this page, but Degas has given slightly more emphasis to the silhouette, so that the egg-shaped volumes do not bulge as much as in the Renaissance drawings above, or as in the Raphael below.
Raphael follows the same approach as Loomis, Lippi and Degas, simplifying the figure into a combination of egg-shaped volumes.
