Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Copying Hogarth



For the next period in my self-teaching program, I will be working with DYNAMIC FIGURE DRAWING by the great American cartoonist and master draughtsman Burne Hogarth. This book and its companions are mainstays in many illustrators' training.

These drawings above are my copies of some of Hogarth's drawings. I have drawn lots of figures in static poses, or even "action" poses, all from photographs, but they are not what I am looking for. Hogarth's figures are idealized and "unreal," but are full of movement and beautifully drawn. 

Old-style art training involved copying master drawings as well as drawing from life. I don't want to draw from the "Old Masters," since they are, well, from a bygone era. But twentieth-century master Hogarth created drawings that I want to copy. I am hoping that I'll gain at least a shadow of the movement and active quality of the original and be able to draw like that myself.

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