Roundism - 11-08-15

Roundism Revisited

This graphite pencil drawing ‘Roundism – 11-08-15’ is based on the principles of circularity. After my last graphite pencil drawing ‘Sans Titre – 06-08-15’ it was time to do another nude in my roundism style. With this one I felt confident to expand the scope of that style. Moreover, I wanted to connect the dominant figure with the negative space around it, by incisions across both spaces. By extending lines through the direction of body parts I got geometric figures outside that mirror those parts. Opening up the figure this way is my very cup of tea. Through this the figure communicates with the space around her maximally, creating dynamics rather than looking static.

Dynamics

You see, I liked the pose of the model because of the relaxed impression of how she stands. Albeit this charming pose the figure looked rather thin on paper. A standing figure easily can look static, especially rendered on a portrait-size paper. The culprit is verticality, I think. It can be associated with stillness and even death, even though the latter often is associated with horizontality. Roundism should be all about dynamics or at least show a motion to be initiated. A visual artist can only create a still object, so why not suggesting it can move too? Didn’t Da Vinci also struggled with this problem? Somehow I remember he portrayed ‘La Belle Ferronière’ and the ‘Lady with an Ermine’ looking outside the frame. Though not identical, the underlying principle endures: to evoke the passage of time.

Rembrandt

Last but not least, the concentric circles I derived from Rembrandt’s nifty solution to divide space with two circles. Historians always put the stress on how he used them to demonstrate his skills. Instead I think compositionary reasons prevail. The circles narrow the attention towards his posture. Hence, my circles. They divide the space into bite-sized parts and even draw the attention to the figure.

Graphite pencil drawing (Pentel, 0.5 mm) on Canson Bristol paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm) (A4-format)
Artist: Corné Akkers