Sketching Drawing and Doodles Nudity and Family Values or Lack Thereof
I have been looking around at some of the artists sites here in LJ land. I am amazed at what I find. No, I won't go back into the quality and daring that is required to post those images. Done that already. Nope. This time I ran across good old fashioned FAMILY VALUES.
Man, how I detest that phrase! It is used as a blanket statement to cover just about any form of bigotry, prejudice, narrow mindedness, and plain good old lack of common sense. I see evidence of it everywhere, tv, radio, commercials, papers. It is out there. Plaster that phrase on and you can excuse just about any bad act you want. Why, even the gang of boys that tied up and beat that young man to death did it to "protect their family values". Ok, I am paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it. Ohhh, hear that. Yes, that is the sound of me reigning in my high horse and getting back to the heart of the matter. Art and the human body.
I love the visual. It is what makes me tingle all over with new puppy happiness just to see something that makes me stop in my tracks. I also like to touch things, goes with the visual. I have a story from my NY trip on that. I will try to get to that in a later post, no room in this one!
I wanted to look around at what was out there on this site, so I went nuts clicking open windows and loading up about six or eight different bloggers art sites. One that I came to had an adult only page that you had to click through.
Mini rant. How stupid is that? I ask you, how bloody stupid is it to make a page that says you have to be over 14 to view this page, so click this bar and go ahead, or, if you aren't 14, you click the other one and go back to the previous page. Really. And just where is the puter police? Who checked your id? Is there a fine for impersonating an adult? Could you really get into trouble? Questions, questions, questions. On to the other issues.
What lies behind the fierce adult page door? Can a page be a door? I suppose, technically, it could be construed as such. Who cares. Behind the door I go. What do I see? Ewww. Naked people. Well, one drawing of three dancing women that were unclothed. I am not talking about the type of drawings that I do of nude men and women, where there is detail and form, light and shadows. No, this is a wonderful simplistic free form way. It is nothing more that a line drawing. What gives it the panache is her (I am assuming here) approach. Fun, free, and fanciful. No labored lines, her poses really do give the impression of movement. I liked them. What fried me to the tee was the comments! She got ragged out (nicely, of course) for drawing them too erotic. The first one even spelled it wrong. Grrrrrr if you are going to knock something, get it right. Nag Nag.
Erotic! There was not a single line of eroticism in those drawings. They were the opposite of that. Not sure what that is, but it sure isn't the cover the body up just so no one gets their tiny little nose out of joint. They expressed her personality with a clear eye. You could look at them and just see her having fun with the lines and movement. Why jump on her about "toning it down". Just what does that mean? Tone it down? Should she put dresses on them? There wasn't any detail. Nothing explicit. I know, I am repeating myself. It just makes me so .... yeah, that too.
I realize that my years of life drawing have desensitized me to the aspect of nudity. I look at someone standing there in front of me and see the play of muscles across the bones, the dips, valleys, and curves of the glorious human form. They move, I draw, I lose myself in the process of rendering what I see onto a flat surface. It is the most rigorous training, that of teaching the hand to obey the brain, to not draw what it thinks is the correct limb, hand, face. If I let it, I get a cartoon. If I teach it, I begin to see that we are made of puzzle pieces, all different in color and shapes, all fitting together in the most unique way to form a single entity. One person.
Here is what is true. That person isn't erotic by their nakedness. Erotic is only in the eye of the beholder. A person without any clothing on is still just a human being. Tall, short, fair, dark, stocky and all the in-betweens. I know why we have become so obsessed with a person and their clothing, but the Victorian era is long over. Can we not drop that useless piece of baggage? I do not advocate nudity walking down our streets, because frankly I don't want to see that much stuff hanging out. Even if it came to that, I would prefer nakedness to the attitude that we have now. Calling her art erotic says much more about their perspective that what she actually drew.
People are strange about what is erotic. One look through WebShots or any of those photo bucket places will teach you that. Thousands of photos of feet. Painted feet, naked feet, shoed feet. You simply can not type the word feet without it looking so wrong, like another language. Feetfeetfeet. I digress.
Hands, faces, lips, tushes, legs, you name it, it can become erotic. To the uninitiated it just looks stupid. A whole bunch of pictures of womens feet with painted toes. Now here is a strange thought. I would be thoroughly creeped out if someone wanted to touch my feet (in a non-pedicuring situation, to be clear) or photograph them. Yet, if someone wanted to draw them I would happily model them, I have painted toes, you see. And never just a single color. It is late and this is starting to make no sense. I will stop now and continue tomorrow, probably on the same topic. I want to go back and leave a comment or two myself! Erotic indeed! Sure, if you are a perv! Oh, is that too harsh? Shame on me.
Man, how I detest that phrase! It is used as a blanket statement to cover just about any form of bigotry, prejudice, narrow mindedness, and plain good old lack of common sense. I see evidence of it everywhere, tv, radio, commercials, papers. It is out there. Plaster that phrase on and you can excuse just about any bad act you want. Why, even the gang of boys that tied up and beat that young man to death did it to "protect their family values". Ok, I am paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it. Ohhh, hear that. Yes, that is the sound of me reigning in my high horse and getting back to the heart of the matter. Art and the human body.
I love the visual. It is what makes me tingle all over with new puppy happiness just to see something that makes me stop in my tracks. I also like to touch things, goes with the visual. I have a story from my NY trip on that. I will try to get to that in a later post, no room in this one!
I wanted to look around at what was out there on this site, so I went nuts clicking open windows and loading up about six or eight different bloggers art sites. One that I came to had an adult only page that you had to click through.
Mini rant. How stupid is that? I ask you, how bloody stupid is it to make a page that says you have to be over 14 to view this page, so click this bar and go ahead, or, if you aren't 14, you click the other one and go back to the previous page. Really. And just where is the puter police? Who checked your id? Is there a fine for impersonating an adult? Could you really get into trouble? Questions, questions, questions. On to the other issues.
What lies behind the fierce adult page door? Can a page be a door? I suppose, technically, it could be construed as such. Who cares. Behind the door I go. What do I see? Ewww. Naked people. Well, one drawing of three dancing women that were unclothed. I am not talking about the type of drawings that I do of nude men and women, where there is detail and form, light and shadows. No, this is a wonderful simplistic free form way. It is nothing more that a line drawing. What gives it the panache is her (I am assuming here) approach. Fun, free, and fanciful. No labored lines, her poses really do give the impression of movement. I liked them. What fried me to the tee was the comments! She got ragged out (nicely, of course) for drawing them too erotic. The first one even spelled it wrong. Grrrrrr if you are going to knock something, get it right. Nag Nag.
Erotic! There was not a single line of eroticism in those drawings. They were the opposite of that. Not sure what that is, but it sure isn't the cover the body up just so no one gets their tiny little nose out of joint. They expressed her personality with a clear eye. You could look at them and just see her having fun with the lines and movement. Why jump on her about "toning it down". Just what does that mean? Tone it down? Should she put dresses on them? There wasn't any detail. Nothing explicit. I know, I am repeating myself. It just makes me so .... yeah, that too.
I realize that my years of life drawing have desensitized me to the aspect of nudity. I look at someone standing there in front of me and see the play of muscles across the bones, the dips, valleys, and curves of the glorious human form. They move, I draw, I lose myself in the process of rendering what I see onto a flat surface. It is the most rigorous training, that of teaching the hand to obey the brain, to not draw what it thinks is the correct limb, hand, face. If I let it, I get a cartoon. If I teach it, I begin to see that we are made of puzzle pieces, all different in color and shapes, all fitting together in the most unique way to form a single entity. One person.
Here is what is true. That person isn't erotic by their nakedness. Erotic is only in the eye of the beholder. A person without any clothing on is still just a human being. Tall, short, fair, dark, stocky and all the in-betweens. I know why we have become so obsessed with a person and their clothing, but the Victorian era is long over. Can we not drop that useless piece of baggage? I do not advocate nudity walking down our streets, because frankly I don't want to see that much stuff hanging out. Even if it came to that, I would prefer nakedness to the attitude that we have now. Calling her art erotic says much more about their perspective that what she actually drew.
People are strange about what is erotic. One look through WebShots or any of those photo bucket places will teach you that. Thousands of photos of feet. Painted feet, naked feet, shoed feet. You simply can not type the word feet without it looking so wrong, like another language. Feetfeetfeet. I digress.
Hands, faces, lips, tushes, legs, you name it, it can become erotic. To the uninitiated it just looks stupid. A whole bunch of pictures of womens feet with painted toes. Now here is a strange thought. I would be thoroughly creeped out if someone wanted to touch my feet (in a non-pedicuring situation, to be clear) or photograph them. Yet, if someone wanted to draw them I would happily model them, I have painted toes, you see. And never just a single color. It is late and this is starting to make no sense. I will stop now and continue tomorrow, probably on the same topic. I want to go back and leave a comment or two myself! Erotic indeed! Sure, if you are a perv! Oh, is that too harsh? Shame on me.