Architecture

I draw whenever I can, it has become a daily practice, a habit, a challenge and a pleasure. For a good draftsman, the subject matter does not play a role in how good the drawing is. You can be drawing a person, a shoe, an animal or landscape – the rules are the same: start with the gesture, go from big to small relationships, find connections, unify, etc. As a draftsman, I consider myself competent, however there is infinite room to grow. I am not perfect, still evolving, and still learning. Some subject matters are still more difficult than others, which means my brain is still stuck in what I think it is, rather than what I see. Which means more practice is needed. One of the challenges for me is Architecture. It is more difficult than other subjects for the same reason it would be difficult to draw a forest around me. I unconsciously concentrate on details (as my brain protects me from my eye being poked out by an unexpected twig), the Whole is perceived too vaguely, and also there is a question – what do I define as the Whole? So going from Big to Small is a challenge here. It requires constant discipline and conscious attention. It is very akin to training a muscle.

And usually, I don’t have enough time to draw architecture. If I am in a city, I’m on the move, there are throngs of people around me, and the usual rule of drawing from life applies — the best view point is always the most physically uncomfortable one.
So most often I aim for a quick sketch, a gesture drawing of a place. It also forces me to pay attention to what matters most. What is the most important relationship of sizes, directions and values, and put those down first. ( as I said, it is no different from figure drawing, just more difficult to stick to it, at least for me).

One of my goals is to become as competent with drawing a space as I am with drawing a figure. At this point I can draw a figure from my head, in any position. I want to be able to draw any space, from any view point, from my head, and make it look organic, alive, not constructed. I now am able to draw and paint a forest that is alive. I want to be able to do it with architecture. Many many gesture drawings from life are necessary, to develop a feel for it.

And it is so much fun. Especially when I am traveling. The romance of new spaces, the character of the place, the atmosphere of the moment. It is so much better than a photograph. I remember those 10 minutes that I had to draw in the rain in London more than any other moment in the city. I remember how that line had to become that fat to overcome the moisture in the air, how it organized the drawing around itself. Or the moment on a roof in Venice, or the little streets in the Chartres when I had to draw super quick because it was getting dark so fast; all those quick sketches created a bond with those places in my heart, in my brain—and now I have a super-record of those moments in my life.