AUGUSTE DETER - A PORTRAIT OF ALZHEIMER DISEASE

Auguste Deter was 55 years old when she died in 1906 in an institute for mentally ill in Frankfurt. Alois Alzheimer, who had been her doctor there, examined her brain after her death, discovering the typical fibrils, plaques and tangles as well as brain atrophy, that have become to be regarded as the clearest diagnostic sign of Alzheimer's disease. These findings were not new, but for a coincidence of events, the already well-described disease became to be known with the name of Auguste's doctor, and her name will be forever remembered as the first person diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, although this is actually not true: she was merely the youngest.

I find the idea of loosing one's identity and memory the most terrible nightmare that could occur in a person's life. Auguste had found the perfect description for that: "I have lost myself" she said repeatedly. These words and the haunting photograph of her in the year of her death have triggered an image in my head and I had to get it out. I had just got to know the work of the artist Dragan Bibin, so maybe the moths came from that corner of my memory. 

It's a study in charcoal on standard charcoal paper (a bit too rough for my taste, but I have 25 sheet of it, so I should use it somehow). Maybe one day I will make a painting of it. 

HEAD DRAWING - FA 602

The other studio course I followed this spring is a Fine Arts course: Head Drawing, with the famous William Maughan. I have found mention of his course and his book - "The Artist's Complete Guide to Drawing the Head" throughout the internet, generally with enthusiastic praise - which I can now confirm to be well deserved. As it was the case last semester with the Chiaroscuro course, the principles he teaches are very simple to grasp....and very hard to apply. In essence the key is to concentrate on the shapes of the shadows, their size and relative positions. Forget about features, forget about outlines, just get the shape and size and position of the shadows right and you will get the gender, age, race and likeness of the sitter. The second key learning is edge treatment. Paying a lot of attention to which edges should be hard and which should be soft, which are well defined and which are "lost" to value similarity boosts drawing technique to a totally different level. 

When you have small children, you suddenly notice how many small children are in the world around you. Your surroundings suddenly seem to teem with children, whom you had never noticed before. In the same way, when you finally understand a key concept you see it written everywhere: even in books that you have read already twice without ever noticing it. This happened to me with edge treatment. It is a key concept for analyzing artwork and for creating effective composition and now that I know what is meant with it I find it everywhere.

We used sanguine and white pastel on toned paper for the drawings. Carbothello 645 is the one he recommends: I used Faber Castell 192 at the beginning, but I ended up ordering Carbothello through the internet because it is way softer than Faber Castell. Any middle value paper is ok with this combination - if you want to go darker it takes a darker paper, as mentioned in a previous post. It takes some time to get used to the capped value range (sanguine simply does not go as dark as charcoal!), but the results are really nice and elegant.

This technique is very close to painting, and indeed he carried me through to my first real "painting" experience, using pastels as a medium.  He was also the one to introduce the Sennelier pastels for painting, which have a wonderful soft consistence and are well worth their price. Now that I am using them also for private work I am seriously considering to order a bigger range of colors, although they cost about 5 dollars each in this part of the world - for the moment I am complementing my modest set with NuPastel and Rembrandt pastel. Last but not least he introduced the technique known as "painture a l'essence" - which led me to squeeze my very first oil tubes onto a palette! I cannot say I liked the experience but it was a good way to loose the respect for the oils somehow.

Peinture a l'essence

That is basically the essence of the course...and yet, it has had a tremendous impact on my drawing skills. First of all, my heads now look like the people I am trying to draw: a very satisfying achievement. Second, this technique is actually applicable to any subject with the same effect - you get a drawing that is closer to a painting than to a cartoon. 

ETHNIC HEAD STUDIES

The brief for this self-imposed assignment read: "At least four monochromatic studies of ethnic heads (inuit, aborigine, maori, etc..). Dry media on toned paper." I cannot use them for portfolio or anything because I do not own the reference photos, but I hope it will be forgiven if I post them only once here. These studies are A4 sized and very fast to do, about 1h each or less. As soon as I started looking for reference I realized the scope of this training exercise: age, sex, race, expression, characterization....One could go on for a lifetime!

Classical sanguine and white pastel. Raatiraore (on the left) from Tahiti is one of the people interviewed in the fantastic book "Six Billion Others", which I warmly recommend to anyone interested in faces, people or the human race in general. The text below is an extract from his interview.

This are experiments with dark grey and white PanPastel. I liked the result, especially in the rendering of fur, so I did two of them.

   

These two ladies from Haiti did not really fit the brief (I know there is another assignment in the box that would fit them better), but I liked their expression. I do not think they turned out very well, especially because both had a difficult lighting and the color of the paper is wrong. I was taught that with monochromatic drawing on toned paper, the value of the paper should be halfway between your darkest dark and your lightest light. In both of these the paper is too light for the color scheme used.