Welcome
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no-one was listening, everything must be said again.”
– Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves
Classical Drawing is a blog about the science behind the art. It presents information for an intelligent approach to drawing. Here, you’ll find the rationales, the explanations, the why’s and wherefore’s of what we put into our drawings and paintings. Those things are based on what we see, and why we see them, is based on the science of light, and the study of human perception.
Anyone can achieve a high level of artistic production, given the right training, knowledge and applied practice. This blog has been conceived as an aid to students of Classical Realism, and to any member of the public who has an interest in delving deeper into the rationales and science behind the art.
As a Classical Realist, it is my belief that drawing and painting can be taught, and can be learned, and can be mastered. Unlike some contemporary strands of “non-skill-based art”, the art that we aim to produce is measurable against a scale of quality. And in recent years, that standard has been increasing, the quality is augmenting, and the bar is being raised again and again. To participate in this arena, we need to attune our eyes, and fine tune our understanding of what we see, so that we, too, can go through the steps of first drawing what we see, then drawing what we know, and finally seeing what we know.