Yoga Drawing
“Drawing means to learn seeing.” (J.W.v. Goethe) First you look at a special quality of a yoga pose, then you develop a feeling and consciousness for this quality and then you draw or paint it. This conscious process starts in seeing.
- 1. Drawing and Painting means to learn seeing
- 2. Seening Dynamic
- 3. Seeing lines of action in yogaposes
- 4. drawing dynamic lines
- 5. Drawing dynamic movements – Ink Drawing
- 6. Seeing and Shading
- 7. Seeing, feeling and drawing the unique expression
- 8. Training objective seeing
1. Drawing and Painting means to learn seeing
“Drawing means seeing” is a quote from german poet Wolfgang von Goehte. Seeing can be trained. This demands your ability to observe and to focus your consciousness on an object. It is possible for everyone, in drawing as well as in painting. First you observe a special quality, then you draw or paint it. It is possible for everyone, you don´t need any experience and you can starkt right now.
Here are some studies, tipps and ideas for improving drawing yoga by learning seeing. I wish you success and joy with your drawings and painings. Camilla
2. Seeing Dynamic
The seeing of the hidden dynamic in a pose can help you a lot, if you want do learn figure drawing. In a pose are leading directions ore forces. You can discover them. They are called lines of action. If you look at a picture peacefully, you can feel a abstract movement. So if you want to make your drawing lively and create the expression figure out the lines of dynamic. In this Anjaneyasana pose are two major movements or lines of action. One is concave and leads the legs, and the other one is convex and rising and refers to the upper body.
A yoga pose has an inner dynamic and abstract movement. In art, these lines are called “lines of action” and show the major movement of a pose. This seeing of the dynamic lines helps you to make your drawing lively and expressive. The lines of dynamic depend also on the person. People tend to have characteristic lines of action, depending to their wohle personality.
3. Seeing lines of action in yoga poses
It traines a lot to study the lines of dynamic in a yoga pose. The lines of dynamic depend from person and pose. Here are some examples for lines of dynamic in yoga poses. If you have a pose, you want to draw, first figure out the lines of dynamic.
4. drawing dynamic lines
With ink or with a brush you can paint dynamic lines very well. You develop the feeling for dynamic and paint lively. Every stroke has a meaning, every stroke has an expression.
The lines of action are like an abstract movement, force or direction of the pose. If you want to makes this force visible in your drawing, you have to study the dynamic lines and you have to make them alive with your imagination while you are drawing. In gesture drawing the lines of dynamic are most important. But also if you want to make a “normal pencil ” drawing, you can study these lines. These lines guide your drawing and give your drawing characteristics.
The Chinese Ink painting is a great art. Artists paint with one stroke. They give the stroke characteristics. You can influence the expression of the stroke, if you think and imagine first, how you want the stroke to be like. For example you want it to be raising, floating, …etc. This exercise is very good to train your drawing and to make your drawing alive. You can give live to a pose.
5. Drawing Dynamic Movements – Ink Drawing
Gesture Drawing is a very loose and free way of drawing. You are only guided by your imagination of the dynamic. Not perfection, but expression is the aim of this drawing. You increase the characterstics.
Abstraction for me means increasing the characteristics. The characteristics can be worked out like a “sculpturing” process. The aim of drawing can be, to show and increase the individual quality. For me working out the main qualities is the abstractional process and abstraction. So abstraction does not mean to “reduced” but to increase and create the unique, typical quality. You can train this process, by free gesture drawing. The lines are expression. Therefore you can try to draw a pose in his dynamic lines.
It is one possibility to make visible a typical quality. The Ink has a fluid and easy going stroke. The movement of the hand goes immediatly into the brush. These lines can create various expressions like easiness, sharp direction, tension, weightlessness, etc. to make feel a typical quality of movement.
The tension is graduated. The most dynamic part ist the middle of the upper body.
The tension is tending to be continous.
The dancer rises up and balances.
The shape is directed. The form ist shaped in accurate technical guidance.
The lines of movement are horizontal.
Iyengar creates the same shape.
6. Seeing and Shading
Shading is a very easy way, how everone can learn and make progress in drawing. Most important is observing!!! First and most important is to observe the shades of your model pose, you want to draw. A pose with wrinkles in cloth is recommended because wrikles create shades. The wrinkles create shades and express the movement. Pay attention to only draw the shades. There exist shades of different grades of darkness. Some shades are very dark, some are medium dark, some light and not very dark. Pay attention to draw yout shades in the same level you can observe. For that you can mix two colores or chose one color in different grades. You don´t have to draw all shades the same way. Sometimes it only needs necessary shades, which are most important for the shape. So it is up to you to decide, which shade you want to emphasis.
1.Observe one region, you want to start with
2. Chose the suitable color.
3.Start to draw the shades, you observe
4.step by step draw the whole figure,.
Drawing and painting by observing
Observing conciously means, to look at the object and to explore it. Therefore it is useful, to choose a certain quality you want to figure out. If you draw something with a pencil, a simple thing is, to observe the shape. Follow the shape with your eyes, look at the proportion. Think about what is the characteristic quality of the shape. Figure out the shape for some minutes. Then draw the shape by lining it – but try to pay attention, to draw the characterstics of the pose. Another quality is the shade. Therefore you have to observe the shades. Show they all the same grade of intensity or different levels or grades of shade? Where are the darkest shades and where are the lightest parts of your object? If you draw the shades of the object, you can draw this in one ore several colors. If you use one color, the you need to draw in different intensities accomodated to the shades. If you use colored pencils, then you have to choose the right colors.
Painting is a bit more advanced, because you have to observe the colors – the shades as well as the light. But if you observe well, it is possible to paint a object as well. I would say: “Painting means seeing the colores of the shades and of the lights.” The difficulty is, not to have fear or think only of the motiv, but to observe and see the motive in the colores of it´s shades and lights.
If I paint a picture, I don´t paint one part after the other. I paint from the atmosphere to the detail. This means, I paint in different layers and construct the painting. I paint first very roughly without any details. Most of the time, I choose one color for the shades, and another for the light and paint the first abstract layer. This is very easy. Then I start painting a bit more detailed the shades and lights so I can define roughly the objects. Then I grow intensity of the lights and shades and repeat this, til the end. At the end I focus on little details like the hands or the face. But these details I paint by the same way: I only paint the light and the shade.
The reason why I paint like this, is that I go from the whole to the detail. Everything is included and becomes included. I feel like this method is like a natural process. The picture gains shape, gains detail and maintains one unity.
7. Seeing, feeling and drawing the unique expression
Most interesting and demanding is to give your drawing or painting the individual and unique expression. Therfore you have to feel this unique expression and you have to have a sens for what you want to draw. Every object has a individual expression. Every pose and every yogi has significant qualities. These qualities can be stronger or weaker, but there are unique qualitiesthat give a pose it´s individuality. These qualities make things recognizable. The better I can recognize and transfer these qualities into my drawing or painting, the more I give live to my drawing. This is an act of giving individuality. And this a work, that cannot be done by a computer machine. I can give expression to a drawing and I can improve this expression, I can exaggerate this expression. It is like purifing. The expression is a result and the better I get the expression the purer becomes the expression. So drawings can make visible qualities.
Articulated dynamic of Heinz Grill
Continuous dynamic of BKS Iyengar
8. Training objective seeing
Something I observe quite often is, that I draw a picture of someone, but I recognize in my drawing more myself than someone else. I draw a face and the feeling, the expression, the proportion remindes me of myself. This phenomenon is quite flexible. I draw someone and the expression but the body I draw shows my own mood and I portrait the feeling of my self instead.
What do I really draw, if I look a a motive? Do I draw my subjective inner image of a body? Do I draw my memory of a headstrand? Or do I draw something, I have really observed from a picture itsself? – The color of shades and lights, the expresssion of a movement? Do I draw out of associations or do I drawout of a new explored observation, I really made? Picasso once said: “If I paint a rose, I have to forget about all roses, I have ever painted before.” I would say: One important thing is, to make oneself free from all old memories, images, you habe in your mind. If you train, to make yourselfe free, You can see something with new eyes. The more you get free from old experiences, the better you can see and oberserve something. I recommend to train seing every day. To choose one object, and to observe the shades or the colores – even if you don´t draw.
Leonardo da Vinci wrote about that in his “Trattato della pittura” – a treatise of painting. This book I recommend for drawing painting artists. You can find it online in Gutenberg.org, here is the link: A Treatise of Painting-Leonardo da Vinci. As he says shoud train to be objective.
There he says : I saw a lot of paintings and I was astonished, that I recognize in a lot of paintings that the face, the movements, the facial expression is similar to the artist hisself. Is the master someone who is lively and vivid, also his figures show the same life and vitality …. Is the master not well proportioned, also his people he draw are not well proportioned. ….The condition of soul and body of in a painting follows the master, the artist. (Number 73, Trattato della pittura) He recommends to study variety and to study the differences, observing well.
This video “2People-2Expressions” shows always two different persons creating the same yoga pose. By seeing two pictures at the same time individual differences can be recognized easier.
Yoga Drawings 