The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards [63]
Clearly, Matisse was finding his “starting shape,” the head of the model, to make sure he would have it the right size to show the whole figure in his painting. The curious thing about Matisse’s remark, I think, is that he felt “suddenly naked” when he saw himself apparently figuring out how big to make that first shape. I think this indicates the almost entirely subconscious nature of this process.
Later on, you too will rapidly find a starting shape or a Basic Unit or your “One”—or whatever you may eventually call it. And someone watching you will think that you “just started drawing.”
Fig. 7-8. Henri Matisse, Young Woman in White, Red Background, 1946.
Fig. 7-9.
Getting off to a good start
I hope that you will become used to quickly choosing a Basic Unit to ensure a good composition. I imagine that you have already grasped the (visual) logic of starting your drawing this way, but allow me to put it into words once more.
When students are first learning to draw, they almost desperately want to get something down on the paper. Often, they just plunge in, drawing some object in the scene in front of them without paying attention to the size of that first shape in relation to the size of the format.
The size of the first shape that you draw controls the subsequent size of everything in the drawing. If that first shape is inadvertently drawn too small or too large, the resulting drawing may be an entirely different composition from the one you intended to depict.
Students find this frustrating, because it often happens that the very thing that interested them in the scene turns out to be “off the edge” of the paper. They don’t get to draw that part at all simply because the first shape they drew was too large. Conversely, if the first shape is too small, students find that they must include much that is of no interest to them in order to “fill out” the format.
The method I am recommending to you, of correctly sizing the first shape (your Basic Unit) that you set down, prevents this inadvertent problem and becomes quite automatic with a bit of practice. Later on, when you have discarded all of your drawing aids—the Viewfinders and plastic Picture Plane, you will use your hands to form a rough “viewfinder” (as in Figure 7-9), and you will still size the first shape (which, in these lessons, we are calling your Basic Unit) correctly for your chosen composition.
Your Negative Space drawing of a chair
What you’ll need:
• Your Viewfinder with the larger opening
• Your Picture Plane
• Your felt-tip marker
• Your masking tape
• Several sheets of drawing paper
• Your drawing board
• Your pencils, sharpened
• Your eraser
• Your graphite stick and several dry paper towels or paper napkins
• About an hour of interrupted time—more, if possible, but at least an hour
Getting set up to draw
You’ll be taking some preliminary steps, so please read all of the instructions before you start. The following are the preliminary steps for every drawing and take only a few minutes, once you have learned the process.
• choosing a format and drawing it on your paper
• toning your paper (if you choose to work on a toned ground)
• drawing your crosshairs
• composing your drawing
• choosing a Basic Unit
• drawing the chosen Basic Unit on the Picture Plane with a felt-tip marker
• transferring the Basic Unit to your paper
• then, starting the drawing
I’ll describe each step.
1. The first step is to draw a format on your drawing paper. For your Negative Space drawing of a chair, use the outside edge of your Viewfinder or the plastic Picture Plane. The drawing will be larger than the opening of your Viewfinder.
As in any field, the “rules” of art are made to be broken by artists working at advanced levels. While acquiring basic drawing skills, however, I think it is best to stay with the task at hand—learning