Cast drawing

[Lon Haverly]

Question for the artist: did you work from the original cast, or from a photo of the cast?

I am not convinced that studies in super detail are of great value, no more than I am convinced that blind gesture drawing, on the other extreme, is of great value. The one locks the eye-hand into a contract with the subject. The other makes no connection between the eye-hand at all.

Somewhere in between is where the time should be spent. I was doing cast drawing from early childhood at art school. The purpose was not to extract photo-detail, but to learn about light and shadow, form, line, blocking-in and shading. We would draw the image, then it would be turned in a different angle, the lighting changed, and we would draw it again completely different.

We seemed to have lost the intent of cast drawing. It was less about photo-realism, and more about light and shadow, form, line, blocking-in and shading, and how all that changes with the same piece.

I was never told that extreme realism was the goal. Perhaps you were. May I suggest that if that is the case, you have arrived. Any critiques of form on this drawing is sheer nit-pickery.