What I look for in a good drawing
A few years ago I met with a gallerist who - while looking at one of my drawings - asked, "What is it?"
I almost responded, "It's a drawing!" but instead politely replied, "It's a ..." and named the object in the drawing.
Identifying the object doesn't remotely describe what I want out of a drawing. Great drawings aren't about the model so much as they're about stimulating (some would say titillating) the eye and the mind.
Artists use a selection of tools (digital brushes, pencils, pens, chalks etc.) and elements ( line, tone, light, composition, etc.) to create images that excite and provoke us.
In my work I try to describe three dimensional space using two dimensional marks. I work mostly with digital brushes, or black or soft graphite pencil and an eraser (to bring back the highlights.) I rarely smudge to soften or grade tones, but instead use repeating closely spaced lines of varying weights.
I begin a drawing by roughly blocking in the composition, in other words I try to place the image in a balanced or interesting way in relation to the four borders of the flat surface.
If you look closely, you'll often see faint construction lines layered beneath the drawing - these are the blocking in lines. As I work a drawing I often find the placement or composition needs to be altered, sometimes by even just a fraction of an inch, and the blocking in lines begin to look like an archeology of my thinking.
Once the general composition is in, I move on to the tones. Tones (light through dark) define the way light falls on an object. The planes or flat surfaces that face the light receive the most light and define the highlights. Planes that bend away from direct light receive less light, and they exhibit a range of shading from light to deep.
Planes that are turned farthest from the light, where one would expect to find the deepest shading, often actually show a moderate light - this is light reflected off a nearby plane (for example a table top or room wall.) Without this reflected light the plane would actually be in deep shade as expected.
I rarely draw the outer edge of an object. The reason for this is that I find it much more satisfying to reveal the object by a more oblique method. Rather than drawing a shape directly I will draw in the adjacent planes. When I stand back from the drawing, the shape reveals itself.
What is good drawing? First I'll describe what I don't look for in a drawing: an accurate rendering of the object.
If it's an accurately represented object, or tricks to make things look realistic that you're looking for, then we're not on the same page.
For me, a good drawing (no matter the style) reflects concentrated and sensitive seeing and observation.
Among the things I look for are unique and unexpected ways of describing form, expressive and varied lines, form within space described by light and a wide range of tone. I also look for an interesting and lively presentation of subject, and a dynamic composition which lends a sense of life and movement to the image.