"Vinnie De Milo": On Drawing Casts

Prior to the advent of modern art, the great art academies in Europe, (and those schools in America who modeled themselves on the European academies) typically required students to take classes in cast drawing before moving on to drawing from the live model. A "cast" is a plaster figure of various aspects of human figures: heads, hands, feet, torsos, whole bodies, and even the separate features, (eye, nose, mouth, ear). Students would draw from the casts, illuminated under dramatic lighting to accentuate the shadow shapes and highlighted areas of the object, the more clearly to reveal the form under observation. Students would not be permitted to move on to drawing from the live model until they had developed acceptable perceptual and drawing skill to render accurate drawings of from the casts. Thus, by definition, every student in the life drawing class had developed and demonstrated great facility in close observation and accurate rendering on paper of three dimensional objects. Cast drawing came to be disdained as "modern art" appeared, (beginning with the Impressionists in France), and young students came to find cast drawing dull and stifling, (notwithstanding their efficacy as tools for developing acute skill in rendering three dimensional forms accurately). In recent years, a vogue has developed of young artists seeking out art schools and ateliers* teaching the "antique" skills of representational drawing, including classes in cast drawing. *(Ateliers are small artist-run studios where students learn under close tutelage, often by one or a few artists who run the atelier. The teaching is in the mode of master/apprentice training.) I took life drawing classes at the Art Students League of New York for nearly 30 years. The League teaches classes in traditional figure drawing and painting, as well as sculpting, but it also includes many classes in abstract and non-representational art. It was founded in the 19th Century by art students in New York who rejected the traditional teaching style modeled on the European academies. I generally only drew from the models, but there were rare occasions where either the model was late arriving or I was uninterested in drawing the model for some reason. On a couple of such occasions I drew from the (somewhat larger than life size and very dusty) full-figure drawing cast that had been a fixture in the studio for decades, probably as far back as the League's 19th Century founding. I have posted two of those drawings here: a frontal view and a rear view. I did not attempt to draw them with the close attention and exacting fidelity that was expected of students in cast drawing classes. Such drawings required hours (spanning days) of slow and deliberate drawing by the students. (And, frankly, I have not developed the skills necessary to produce such finished "academic" cast drawings.) I did these both rather swiftly, probably no longer than 30 minutes on either drawing. I used charcoal to draw the frontal view and a pencil to draw the rear view.