Violin drawing competition

[Andreas Preuss]

Time for commenting! 

 

Thanks for all participants submitting their work. Loved them all and I took my time to write some serious comments.

 

I was pretty amazed how much the whole thing glitched into discussion about modern art almost to the degree that I was tempted to break my own rule and participate at the discussion. 

 

Besides, why should we stop at our own violins with ideas from modern art? There seems to be an invisible wall. What about tossing all those complicated varnish approaches in the dustbin get drunk and work like pollock or Rothko? Yeah and if we want to get an auction record 300 years after entering the eternal restbed, I’d say ‘normal’ straight and clean might be not the best idea. 

 

In one way or another I liked them all because it tells about the person who made the drawing. 

 

@Marty Kasprzyk

gets the prize for most variations.  Special prize for mind twisting design solutions. (Still wondering how to pronounce your last name correctly…)

 

@PhilipKT

Yeah I liked the blank paper solution. Must have been inspired by John Cage. Best prize for the ‘imagine it yourself’ solution.

 

@David Burgess

Hmm, should I give you the art critic prize? (Let others do the work!)

 

@Al Cramer

Special prize for best story. More than what I would have expected. 

 

@Don Noon

Here we go,  I just don’t know if I am looking at a violin or a viola. But yeah, I know that you focus only on essential things and it got four corners and two f holes. Special prize for the coolest drawing. 

 

@Flattmountain

You got the illustrator prize! I love the shadow from the fingerboard, and so many other lovely details. I wouldn’t suspect from your drawing someone with a disassembled life.

@Blank face

That’s perfect! Best prize for Paul Klee style. And I am sure this will sound terrific.

@Advocatus Diaboli

Picasso Prize. That’s quite something, I mean artistically. Cubism is not as easy as it looks like. (Tried it myself very long ago)

 

@Three13

I was looking at your drawing for a while. Reminded me of Guiseppe Guarneri del Gesus Pochettes. 

 

@Rue

I looked at your drawing the longest, because I couldn’t figure out why there are the red and green lines. It looked to me as if you were thinking about something. This makes the philosopher prize.

 

@CaseyLouque

Best prize for a realistic master. I’d say I am looking at the ‘Kreisler’ by Guiseppe Guarneri del Gesu? Pretty amazing. 

 

@Mel S.

I’d give this the prize for drawing in one shot, I couldn’t see any corrections. Just born out of your mind. 

 

@Ken_N

If we draw something from a picture we do look much closer on what we see there. I see much effort in your drawing to make it look right

 

@Jim Bress

The violin was born from the cello, right? Looks like Guiseppe Testore.     Love the idea to view a violin compared to the outline of its bigger siblings. 

 

@MikeC

You are going into pretty difficult waters. That’s the prize for the most ambitious drawing! Trying to make a 3D impression with your own hand on the picture! Wow. And somehow I know the feeling, once you get drawn into it you can’t stop. 

 

For your second drawing, that’s a pretty intriguing drawing. I think there were some artists who would blow out your vision with coloring it in wild color combinations.

 

@Violadamore

 

That’s cute. I’ll give you the Japanese Manga prize for it. It literally looks as if it had escaped from one of those funny stories. 

[Violadamore]

1 minute ago, Andreas Preuss said:

Time for commenting! 

 

Thanks for all participants submitting their work. Loved them all and I took my time to write some serious comments.

 

I was pretty amazed how much the whole thing glitched into discussion about modern art almost to the degree that I was tempted to break my own rule and participate at the discussion. 

 

Besides, why should we stop at our own violins with ideas from modern art? There seems to be an invisible wall. What about tossing all those complicated varnish approaches in the dustbin get drunk and work like pollock or Rothko? Yeah and if we want to get an auction record 300 years after entering the eternal restbed, I’d say ‘normal’ straight and clean might be not the best idea. 

 

In one way or another I liked them all because it tells about the person who made the drawing. 

........................

 

@Violadamore

 

That’s cute. I’ll give you the Japanese Manga prize for it. It literally looks as if it had escaped from one of those funny stories. 

Whatever.    I followed the rules strictly and absolutely (even sending you a PM for a ruling on a possible loophole).  I do drafting and illustration, but I can't function without proper tools or software, so I finally decided to just draw something, and be done with it.  A freehand artist I'm not.

You have no idea how hard it was for me to keep quiet while everybody else was going bananas posting comics and stuff. 

[PhilipKT]

Andreas, this is joyful. Thank you very much and God bless you. I appreciate your giving me credit for more skill than I obviously have

[PhilipKT]

On 12/20/2021 at 10:02 AM, Marty Kasprzyk said:

Here's some free-hand sketches of various historic instrument shapes all of which have the same proportions.  I suspect the corner points were added to bash the player's hand and bow.

This is the one that I would buy and frame and hang on my wall. I really like this

[Andreas Preuss]

13 minutes ago, Violadamore said:

Whatever.    I followed the rules strictly and absolutely (even sending you a PM for a ruling on a possible loophole).  I do drafting and illustration, but I can't function without proper tools or software, so I finally decided to just draw something, and be done with it.  A freehand artist I'm not.

You have no idea how hard it was for me to keep quiet while everybody else was going bananas posting comics and stuff. 

Thanks for observing the rules! I had to resist pretty much too in not jumping into the discussion. I made the rules to collect the works first and then release the typical ‘MN discussion energy’.

or otherwise some endless discussions would have drowned the posting of drawings.

happy new year violadamore!

[Rue]

This was fun! I really enjoyed seeing everyone's submissions!

@Andreas Preuss  Thanks so much for hosting! 

@Mel S. Danke schön! Made my day! 

[Flattmountain]

37 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

Time for commenting! 

 

Thanks for all participants submitting their work. Loved them all and I took my time to write some serious comments.

 

I was pretty amazed how much the whole thing glitched into discussion about modern art almost to the degree that I was tempted to break my own rule and participate at the discussion. 

 

Besides, why should we stop at our own violins with ideas from modern art? There seems to be an invisible wall. What about tossing all those complicated varnish approaches in the dustbin get drunk and work like pollock or Rothko? Yeah and if we want to get an auction record 300 years after entering the eternal restbed, I’d say ‘normal’ straight and clean might be not the best idea. 

 

In one way or another I liked them all because it tells about the person who made the drawing. 

 

@Marty Kasprzyk

gets the prize for most variations.  Special prize for mind twisting design solutions. (Still wondering how to pronounce your last name correctly…)

 

@PhilipKT

Yeah I liked the blank paper solution. Must have been inspired by John Cage. Best prize for the ‘imagine it yourself’ solution.

 

@David Burgess

Hmm, should I give you the art critic prize? (Let others do the work!)

 

@Al Cramer

Special prize for best story. More than what I would have expected. 

 

@Don Noon

Here we go,  I just don’t know if I am looking at a violin or a viola. But yeah, I know that you focus only on essential things and it got four corners and two f holes. Special prize for the coolest drawing. 

 

@Flattmountain

You got the illustrator prize! I love the shadow from the fingerboard, and so many other lovely details. I wouldn’t suspect from your drawing someone with a disassembled life.

@Blank face

That’s perfect! Best prize for Paul Klee style. And I am sure this will sound terrific.

@Advocatus Diaboli

Picasso Prize. That’s quite something, I mean artistically. Cubism is not as easy as it looks like. (Tried it myself very long ago)

 

@Three13

I was looking at your drawing for a while. Reminded me of Guiseppe Guarneri del Gesus Pochettes. 

 

@Rue

I looked at your drawing the longest, because I couldn’t figure out why there are the red and green lines. It looked to me as if you were thinking about something. This makes the philosopher prize.

 

@CaseyLouque

Best prize for a realistic master. I’d say I am looking at the ‘Kreisler’ by Guiseppe Guarneri del Gesu? Pretty amazing. 

 

@Mel S.

I’d give this the prize for drawing in one shot, I couldn’t see any corrections. Just born out of your mind. 

 

@Ken_N

If we draw something from a picture we do look much closer on what we see there. I see much effort in your drawing to make it look right

 

@Jim Bress

The violin was born from the cello, right? Looks like Guiseppe Testore.     Love the idea to view a violin compared to the outline of its bigger siblings. 

 

@MikeC

You are going into pretty difficult waters. That’s the prize for the most ambitious drawing! Trying to make a 3D impression with your own hand on the picture! Wow. And somehow I know the feeling, once you get drawn into it you can’t stop. 

 

For your second drawing, that’s a pretty intriguing drawing. I think there were some artists who would blow out your vision with coloring it in wild color combinations.

 

@Violadamore

 

That’s cute. I’ll give you the Japanese Manga prize for it. It literally looks as if it had escaped from one of those funny stories. 

I appreciate your confidence in my character… although my life is much more of a mess than I would like, I am trying. 
 

have a happy new year Andreas!!

[Andreas Preuss]

8 minutes ago, PhilipKT said:

Andreas, this is joyful. Thank you very much and God bless you. I appreciate your giving me credit for more skill than I obviously have

Philip, now that the official part of the competition is over you still are free to post something.  

Happy new year!

 

[Three13]

It was a fun challenge - I gave myself 5 minutes to try and copy the de Beriot del Gesu, but made the mistake of starting with the ffs, and discovered I didn’t have room for the corpus.

Lots of great fiddles in the thread!

[Violadamore]

Here's something prettier to look at. 

[Rue]

Ah! Amabile! 

[PhilipKT]

12 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

Philip, now that the official part of the competition is over you still are free to post something.  

Happy new year!

 

I don’t want to spoil the mood, ha ha.

[Al Cramer]

 I was amazed at the quality of the work people submitted!  It's really clear that everybody here sees/thinks/feels about the violin in a way that's unique to them. It was really cool to see how successful people were at expressing their own  visions.

My New Years resolutions: 1. figure out how to integrate 2d & 4th positions into my playing; 2. make more animated drawings to post on youtube.

 

 

[Violadamore]

19 minutes ago, Flattmountain said:

........I am trying.

I get told that a lot......   

[Flattmountain]

Just now, Violadamore said:

I get told that a lot......   

not sure how to feel about that

[Andreas Preuss]

2 minutes ago, Flattmountain said:

I appreciate your confidence in my character… although my life is much more of a mess than I would like, I am trying. 
 

have a happy new year Andreas!!

Well, some artists started their artwork to clean up the mess in their life. Best wishes to you!

happy new year Flatmountain!

[Andreas Preuss]

12 minutes ago, Al Cramer said:

 I was amazed at the quality of the work people submitted!  It's really clear that everybody here sees/thinks/feels about the violin in a way that's unique to them. It was really cool to see how successful people were at expressing their own  visions.

My New Years resolutions: 1. figure out how to integrate 2d & 4th positions into my playing; 2. make more animated drawings to post on youtube.

 

 

Will be waiting for more animated stories!

Happy new year, Al!

[Andreas Preuss]

21 minutes ago, Three13 said:

It was a fun challenge - I gave myself 5 minutes to try and copy the de Beriot del Gesu, but made the mistake of starting with the ffs, and discovered I didn’t have room for the corpus.

Lots of great fiddles in the thread!

At least I got the maker right. Supposedly the Beriot is the same time period as the Kreisler. 
 

but hey, 5 minutes, that’s pretty amazing. Actually I make apprentices in my shop draw violin scrolls, f holes, corners and eventually whole outlines to learn measuring proportions with their eyes.

Happy new Year, Three13!

[Three13]

5 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

At least I got the maker right. Supposedly the Beriot is the same time period as the Kreisler. 
 

but hey, 5 minutes, that’s pretty amazing. Actually I make apprentices in my shop draw violin scrolls, f holes, corners and eventually whole outlines to learn measuring proportions with their eyes.

Happy new Year, Three13!

It’s got very successful wacky ffs - Happy New Year!

 

[David Burgess]

1 hour ago, Andreas Preuss said:

@David Burgess

Hmm, should I give you the art critic prize? (Let others do the work!)

That'll be fine. I'm much better at fashioning three-dimensional objects than I am at drawing. Even my handwriting sucks.

[Violadamore]

1 hour ago, Andreas Preuss said:

Thanks for observing the rules! I had to resist pretty much too in not jumping into the discussion. I made the rules to collect the works first and then release the typical ‘MN discussion energy’.

or otherwise some endless discussions would have drowned the posting of drawings.

happy new year violadamore!

Happy New Year to you, too.  Thanks for dreaming this thread up. 

[Davide Sora]

The purpose of this competition is not very clear to me, apart from showing the skills of artistic drawing, which of course are commendable. But drawing an outline with fs and anything else completely freehand I don't think it has much to do with violin making skills. Even for learning, to draw and make appropriate curves, I think it is more useful to try to reproduce various stylistic examples simply by tracing them manually with the sheet superimposed on the photographs. In real work, to design a model, even a personal one, for me it is essential to set reference points (center lines, widths, curve change points, radius centers, etc.) to obtain a concrete and usable result.

Then, it is certainly enjoyable to draw freehand, and also fun to appreciate the results of the various authors, if that is the purpose of the thread, provided that a thread must have a particular purpose, which is not necessarily the case

Happy New Year!!

PS: I didn't participate in the competition because making a decent and presentable freehand drawing up to my standard would take me way too much time, I'm sorry.

[Andreas Preuss]

2 hours ago, Davide Sora said:

But drawing an outline with fs and anything else completely freehand I don't think it has much to do with violin making skills.

Sorry, Davide, here I must disagree. I have seen several times in my shop apprentices struggling with catching things with their eyes on woodwork details for example the scroll volute. Thinking about the causes i figured that they were not able to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ the flow of lines in the frame of proportions. When I made them do drawing exercises I could see a clear and quick improvement. If you want to make a good copy of something, you certainly need this skill. And even if you always work on your own model with precise models and patterns, there are always details in the 1/10mm margin which need to be done by eye and can make the difference between acceptable and elegant. And if you happen to have an apprentice in your shop struggling with those things, paper is cheaper than wood.
 

Well, I didn’t expect everyone to participate and do respect your reasons not to do so. 
 

Happy new year, Davide!

[Davide Sora]

37 minutes ago, Andreas Preuss said:

Sorry, Davide, here I must disagree. I have seen several times in my shop apprentices struggling with catching things with their eyes on woodwork details for example the scroll volute. Thinking about the causes i figured that they were not able to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ the flow of lines in the frame of proportions. When I made them do drawing exercises I could see a clear and quick improvement. If you want to make a good copy of something, you certainly need this skill. And even if you always work on your own model with precise models and patterns, there are always details in the 1/10mm margin which need to be done by eye and can make the difference between acceptable and elegant. And if you happen to have an apprentice in your shop struggling with those things, paper is cheaper than wood.
 

Well, I didn’t expect everyone to participate and do respect your reasons not to do so. 
 

Happy new year, Davide!

Of course I can only agree, practicing drawing is extremely useful. What I meant is that doing it freehand and without proportional references (blank sheet) is too difficult if you don't have an innate predisposition and the risk of wasting time is very high. In my opinion, starting by copying is more productive, for example a proportional grid pattern on your paper and superimposed on the original (whatever it is, a landscape, the facade of a building, or a violin) helps a lot to assimilate the flow of curves and proportions, it is no coincidence that it is exactly how ancient painters did.

Happy new year!

[Ken_N]

I'm guessing that many violins are built on the same form. They copied it over and over. Tweaked it, filed it, filled it in. I think that del Gesu just made the corner and end blocks the way he wanted, and the form gave a minimum width. 

I copied the purfling of the Vieuxtemps del Gesu, and the Gofriller posters I have. They are certainly done on the same basic pattern. The del Gesu is almost the same front and back. It has the c bout pushed way out, but he kept the same radius. Tiny corners tight corners that open the inside area up.

Even the f hole placement is almost the same!

Drawing them out with tools is fun. By eye is a challenge. Without looking at something? I don't know about that.

5:20 and the light is fading fast.