‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.’ We nod in approval when we hear Pablo Picasso’s profound admiration for the young ones. All of us know that it is important to preserve the innocence, curiosity, and playfulness akin to children. However, one wonders – what Picasso meant exactly? Looking deeper into the influence of children in the fine art field, it appears that there were a number of 20th century’s greatest painters who collected drawings of children such as Kandinsky, Matisse, Klee, Miro, and Dubuffet. I would like to give you an example comparing sketches – one drawn by me and other by Doroteja (8-year-old girl), both portraying a face – and, after analysing them, reveal what children possess that these masters of Modernism were so excited about.
Together with Doroteja, we played various drawing games. One of them was to pick 2-3 colors, draw something in 10 seconds, then exchange the drawings and finish them anyway you want it. In such a short period of time, one can draw only something abstract or just a simple scribble. However, when we would swap the drawings to finish them, often we recognised a human face in a scribble, although the way each of us drew the face was remarkably different.
Let’s compare the drawing “Granny” finished by Doroteja, and “Fairy” finished by me.
The first thing that comes to eye is that my drawing skills of a face are more developed than that of Doroteja. The drawing of the fairy was started by her: Doroteja drew abstract swirls and an “X” in the middle using purple and pink felt-tip pens. Then, with care and attention, I added contour lines for the cheek, lips, and two dashes for the eyes. In fact, I knew where to put these lines to make the face look rather proportionate and cute. I learned this trick by copying cartoon characters. Thus, the result is reminiscent of a fairy from a Disney movie.
The style of cartoons is not realistic. The proportions are more or less distorted, but very strategically: in order to create a cute appeal, the face proportions are derived from that of a child, as in my ”Fairy’’ drawing. Meanwhile, Doroteja finished my started sketch by drawing a granny’s face in blue. The whole structure of the head as well as facial features not only do not correspond to the proportions of a real human, but also ‘wrongly’ distort them. It is very unlikely that such a drawing would be used to create Disney cartoon characters, but in the fine art world, such a style is very valued. Why? Because an object (in this case, a human face), that is depicted unrealistically, is read as a composition of metaphors or symbols, conveying what is invisible. In Doroteja’s drawing, for example, Granny has no mouth. Obviously, that never occurs in real life. However, accepting this feature on a metaphorical or figurative level, absence of a mouth can mean muteness.
Now that I have described with examples why realistic features in art are distorted and how they can be read, we can analyse both mine and Doroteja’s sketches more thoroughly in order to better compare their artistic value.
In my sketch, from the fairy’s face expression it seems she is sedate and in her thoughts. The colours pink and purple are reminiscent of flower blossoms. The swirls could resemble fluffy hair, and the purple spiral with the ”x” on her eye could be a flower-pin attached to her hair, or like a natural part of a fairy-flower. Looking at this drawing, I imagine a gorgeous heroine living in a world of wonders, in nature, among flowers, and gazing at the horizon while being deep in her thoughts.
In Doroteja’s drawing, the granny is gazing upwards. Older people are often spiritual, which is why such a gaze up to the sky reminds me of a prayer or an earnest plea for God. The clumsy contour line is reminiscent of the fragility and wrinkles inherent in old age. Meanwhile, in the fairy drawing, the quick and light swirls perfectly reflect youthfulness. The blue color conveys other charactersitics intrinsic to elderly people such as calmness, slowness, peacefulnes, perhaps even reminiscent of pale skin, and silver hair; and a little sadness that would lead to seek help from God. The red lines in places resemble wrinkles, but they swirl up so lightly that the granny’s face appears as if being caressed by (spiritual) wind.
But why analyze such ordinary sketches? After all, they are not exceptional works of art. True, but it is exactly these type of ordinary sketches from which exceptional works of art are being created.
So which sketch is more valuable when it comes to artmaking? Well, how is value measured in art? A good work of art can enrich our perception of the world. the drawing of the fairy, though pleasing to the eye, is not very valuable because apart from beauty, it does not convey much. In addition, this style of face drawing is already widely used, especially in animation. Such a drawing might be pleasing to the eye, but not very meaningful or in other way enriching.
Meanwhile, the style of granny‘s drawing is used less frequently. As a result, it demands the viewer to ponder about possible meanings, this way giving the painting more content and allowing the artist to communicate more ideas to the viewer. Great works of art will have to be deciphered by viewers as they communicate in a “language” of images, that is to say art can convey more in visuals what cannot be fully described in words.
After analyzing these two drawings, it becomes clear why I (and other great artists) value drawings by children so much. Children, without drawing skills and without knowledge about proportions, convey the world on paper in inventive ways without even trying to do so. Meanwhile, as an artist with accumulated knowledge and fairly developed skills, I have to work hard in order to find ways how to “speak” in a visual language that is different from what I know and what is already out there. But only if I want to enrich this world with meaningful works of art.
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