The study of nature

When we think about nature and abstraction with the drawing pencil, that’s a situation that of course has a history. In the past – meaning in the 19th century and before – the only way to communicate what things look like was through realistic representation. With the development of photography, a lot changed for drawing and painting. A Monet would be unthinkable without photography. The Impressionists at the time recognized this opportunity: they were no longer forced to represent things as realism demanded, but they could abstract and express atmospheres. This was the departure into modernism and eventually paved the way for abstract art. The study of nature in drawing is still indispensable for any art education and is very topical.

Then the question often arises: What’s the point of studying nature if it can be photographed? The answer is that through drawing or painting a quality is added that isn’t possible through photography. It’s in the hand of the artist to reveal something that is there but that no one has seen. The artist makes it visible through the lines, through the vibration of the lines, and through the composition. In that sense, the study of nature is also an expedition, a journey. It’s something you rediscover for yourselves.
Photography as an artistic expression is concerned with the same parameters as drawing and if someone wants to photograph well, they have to see and feel the subtlest differences of light and master the composition.

But when you’re drawing something with a drawing pencil, you are much slower, you have to look very carefully to transfer what you see into a line. The moment you pick up the pencil and study nature, it’s already an abstraction. Because you are studying a three-dimensional object and then translate it into two dimensions, a line onto a surface. So for this impulse, I invite you to draw a line between nature study and abstraction.

So go out into nature and let yourself be found. Because one prerequisite for studying nature is, first and foremost, the love for the object you’re taking on, looking at it very closely, looking at it for hours, trying to grasp the finest elevations, depressions, and curvatures, indeed the essence of the object. It’s a very, very slow process. That’s why you must love what you’re looking at. You know, when you love something, you see it with different eyes.

This selection is a very personal one. Is it a flower, is it a leaf? Is it something you can’t take with you, where you must sit down and study it on the spot? In any case, as a first step, I advise you to try something that seems simple enough to you. It will still be very complex. Because everything that seems simple has subtle differences, and it’s those that matter. It’s about picking up these fine movements in the form with the pencil. This is where things become challenging, because the finest differences in the drawing sometimes feel like huge valleys and mountains in the movement of the line, but the difference is only gradual. It’s impossible to express this difference in millimeters, that it’s visible. It’s only tentative.

For the beginning, take only a section. If you chose something that has flowers and leaves and stems, take only a section of it, for example just the leaf. You study only a small part but you examine it very, very carefully. And equally carefully you decide where it should be placed on your sheet. This is essential for the success of the drawing. You can already see another basic requirement for the nature study. That is: slow. Very slowly, you study the shape you’ve carefully chosen. So slowly that you won’t believe how slow you can go at all. And even then, you’re still too fast. Take a deep breath and work very slowly, completely at yourself, completely at the pencil tip, completely at the thing you’re drawing.

If in one hour you can depict one inch, exactly the way it occurs in nature, then you’re at the right pace. Very slowly. Very slowly, you first study only the contour, the outer form of what you’ve found. Pay attention the smallest differences. Once you’ve grasped the contour of this shape, the eye already knows what everything looks like inside. If you want, you can suggestively study a few small details inside, with delicate lines. But that’s not the main exercise. It’s the study of the outer contour that I urge you to do, where the line vibrates perfectly. Subtle and very delicate differences. Sharpen your pencil. And be slow.

On our topic of nature and abstraction, we’ve already discussed the first step of abstraction, going from the three-dimensional to the two-dimensional, with this drawing being as realistic as possible. For the further steps of abstraction, there are two options I’d suggest. Once you’ve finished your flawless nature study, try drawing lines around this flower or leaf at their outermost reference points and connecting them. Draw these lines with a ruler, even if this may seem counterintuitive at first. But after the nature study, which has vital lines, you need this geometry for the further composition. You’re deriving geometric lines from these reference points, these outer vertices or points or edges. Or you can draw an extension out of the inner lines, which will eventually meet somewhere. Then you’ll see that this creates a geometry. A square, a triangle, a rectangle, a pentagon, a hexagon, a polygon, a circle, all kinds of things. But it is geometry. You have thus evolved the theme of vitality, namely the naturalistic form of your natural object, into geometry. These two poles, vitality and geometry, are what you’re wrestling with.

When you study something very carefully and spend a lot of time on it, it imprints itself very strongly within you, on your inner memory, on your feeling. Take a new sheet of paper, close your eyes and try to draw it again as precisely as possible, blindly, with very sensitive lines. You’ll be amazed how much you’ve remembered and how free these lines are. This is the second possibility for a further step into abstraction. From this exercise of the exact nature study and this free, blind drawing, which you try to reproduce as exactly as possible, you can also develop your own shapes. It will revive your further artistic creation, if you find new forms, your forms, your handwriting, your very personal handwriting.

The study of nature also gives you a gift. To make something accurate and beautiful in the study of nature and in art, you must leave time behind. Take your time, as the matter demands it. When you’re slowly immersing yourself in it and you’re concentrating, you’re outside of time. Because you have to be completely in the moment. This is an extraordinary experience that you’re given. To be detached from this stress of everyday life. To be immersed in the wonderful lines that nature whispers into your pencil. To float in time, to be easy, to be completely outside of this everyday reality.

The second gift that comes with this studying nature is that you develop a deep understanding of the essence of the plant, of the essence of this piece of nature that you’ve chosen to draw. Even if it’s a simple shape. Through drawing, a deep understanding of the inner essence is communicated to you. And you’ll find that every tree, every flower, every leaf, every stone, every animal, every bird, every fly, whatever you find, but especially seemingly static things like plants, which are rooted in one place, carry a unique essence.

And your insight into life, into creation will be again a bit deeper. This is the reward waiting for you, in return for your dedication to the study of nature and its abstraction.

I wish you very beautiful research results and very beautiful, fruitful moments of drawing!