Drawing activities
Drawing in the Middle ages, the brilliance of Renaissance, Leonard da Vinci, The exaggeration of Baroque and the modern pictorial techniques.
Drawing course
Home
- Printable Coloring pages
- Drawing notebook
- Educational games
- Learn to draw
- Crafts and Activities
- School activities
- Links
- Contact with us
- Home
- Learn to draw
- HISTORY OF DRAWING (II)
History of drawing
A greater number of complete works is preserved from the Middle Ages. During this period, vivacious representations prevail. Spectacularity and garnish is imposed without giving any opportunity to colour to act ; Line is in charge of standing out the detail. The Arab invasion introduces a revolutionary support to drawing and painting: the paper. This is a Chinese invention that will facilitate illustration to stop being an exclusive activity which monks did on skin and cane parchments. The general population can achieve it. Starting from that moment, it can be shown the radiance of color. It is also necessary to highlight the introduction to the general use of the metallic fountain pen and the ink as we know it at the moment.
From
Italy, and advancing among the Gothic period ,(second half of XV century
), the Renaissance is disarticulated of the religious stuff. Now the important
thing is to recognize the beauty and to know how to express it . Being based
on the Greco-Roman artistic civilization (the old thing revives), the natural
and concise is imposed again. The magnates allow their busts to be reflected
in multitude of portraits. Of the mere forgotten decoration, the feminine
nude begins to appropriate of the main topics in the creations and one returns
to the study of the human figure. The drawing ascends to the volumetric
thanks to the new techniques of colouring . The game of lights and shades,
together with the perspective, makes reality nearer to drawing. A manifestation
of artists demonstrates this new development: El Greco, Miguel Angel, Sandro
Boticelli, Leonardo da Vinci.
The last one stands out from the others because of his investigation desire.
He picks up under his works anatomy studies, invention of devices and a
new way of using the illumination in drawing. The " esfumato"
dissipates the closed line of the contour of the drawing to increase depth
and what it will pursue from then on: the approach to the natural thing.
Therefore the drawing stops to be something spontaneous and subjective to
become a true discipline.
The Baroque stretches out until the VII century. It uses exaggeratedly
all the resources contributed by the Renaissance to express a wide range
of attitudes, from the calamity of poverty until the splendor of wealth.
Rightness and uniformity are broken in the pictorial representations and
it is tried to the maximum to move and to attract the spectator.
From the XIX century onwards the continuous uniformity that had followed
the history of drawing is broken. It forks in multitude of styles: romanticism,
realism, impressionism, expressionism, fauvism, cubism, futurism, surrealism...
Nevertheless, all they make use of what had so far been contributed as a
tool to express new approaches of the society they were living in.