Painting v Drawing
While watching the video of Tuesday's meeting (that I largely missed) something Dan said about edges got me thinking... One of the pillars of most (almost all) 2D art is the generation of forms. Sometimes representative forms (e.g. people, trees, buildings, noses, leaves, windows, etc.,...) and sometimes abstracted forms (e.g. squares, circles, squiggles, etc.,...). I'm wondering if the method used by an artist to create the forms in a piece of work is one way of distinguishing "painting" from "drawing". So, not an issue of medium or application but rather how the edges that define a form within a 2D piece of art are established. Could it be that "painting" is the generation of actual edges by creating areas of colour and shade that butt up against each other so creating an inherent boundary, while "drawing" is the representation of an edge by use of a line? So Ingres generated the forms in this picture by painting different areas of colour and tone to show where the lady ends and the wall behind her begins.
But in this other 2D piece of art below showing a different lady, Ingres has represented her edges by using a line. I.e. he has drawn the edges. Other than her hair, there is no significant difference in colour or shade between the lady and the wall behind her. Without her edge being represented by a drawn line her form would be impossible to discern.
Of course, pieces of work that are called "paintings" can have "drawn" aspects. This lady by Van Gogh, is both painted and drawn. Her outline is represented with a drawn line (of black paint) in a clear way that is not present in the above Ingres painting. But, were Van Gogh's line to be removed his lady's form would still be generated by the "painted difference" between her from and that of her background. The edge would be somewhat less obvious, but I think we'd still be able to tell where it is. So in the senses I'm trying to establish here, this work has both painted and drawn features.
I think both in my own work and the work of others I am attracted to drawn edges (be the medium pencil, charcoal or oil paints).
Further to yesterday's posts, I think the use of "drawn" edges in "paintings" is quite common. But they are often disguised as representative aspects. The pistol-brandishing kid in Delacriox's 'Liberty Leading The People' has a drawn edge that Delacroix has disguised as what could be described as an edge-shadow. Helpful here as the colour and tone of the boys right arm is so similar to the smokey background that the arm's form would otherwise bleed into the smoke.
I think our eyes are used to seeing 'edge-shadows' in real life when objects are only front-lit so become darker as they receded away from our viewpoint, falling into shadow at their edges. In this photo, the girl's right arm has an edge shadow. If I were to paint a copy of this photo, I would inevitably draw an outline (in paint) around its edge, reinforcing its form.
Also, some artists use other compositional ploys to create drawn edges. E.g. Manet draws the outline of his piper's legs by use of trouser stripes.
I do notice an increase in the use of drawn outlines in painting in the second half of the C19th. A good example of this is to compare Millet's and Van Gogh's Sheep Sheerers (1853 and 1889 respectively)
Millet uses far greater contrasts of tone and colour to generate actual boundaries between the different forms and shapes he depicts. He does use drawn edges, but they are mostly disguised as edge shadows. Van Gogh on the other hand offers very little tonal contrast, he relies far more strongly on drawn edges to distinguish the different forms in the image, and Van Gogh's drawn edges are in many cases not concealed as edge shadows; his drawn contours are compositional aspects in their own right.