WHAT IS DRAWING?
Richard L. Tuck’s Artistic Philosophy About Drawing
Seeing, Feeling, and the Movement of the Hand
Drawing, for me, begins with a simple but enduring question: how do you see something, and how do you feel it with your hands? And once you’ve felt it through the movement of your hand, how does that change or affect your perception of what you’ve seen?
The drawings that follow reflect four different ways I answer that question. One sketch explores how form can be built without a continuous contour, relying on opposing directional marks to assert mass. Another sketch focuses on gestures and spatial projection, showing how a partial figure can still occupy space and without a focus on scientific anatomy. Both, examples of drawings in process, capture form, mass and weight. The third (a finished work) describes the surfaces/tones within the forms and the space they occupy. The fourth (another finished work) turns to color and light, using pastels and cross‑hatched shading to describe the behavior of illumination passing through glass. Together, they outline a range of my approach — from line as structure, to line as movement, to tonal value, to color as a carrier of light, movement and form.
Drawing as Inquiry
I’ve taught students of all ages to draw. Improvement depends on determination and follow‑through. In a 1990 published article, Critical Thinking Enters the Classroom, I described how I ask students, in an age-appropriate way, to talk about artworks and about their own art‑making process.
Drawing always brings you into a cognitive and emotional dialogue with yourself: Why begin? What result do you expect? As the drawing develops, what do you think about the result? Do you continue, and if so, does your purpose change?
In this way, drawing becomes foundational — not simply gesture, but the deeper questions of draftsmanship.
For a fuller example of how I guided children to talk about their drawings, see my blog post How I’ve Viewed Art with Children.
Why Draw?
I am a realist artist. Early in my career, I learned that sustained visual focus leads to stronger spatial perception and a more natural understanding of form and space. My early desire for shortcuts produced stiff lines, shallow space, and unconvincing interpretations of what I observed.
Over time, I discovered that drawing also expands one’s capacity for visual projection and, in turn, visual imagination. Architectural and engineering drawing rely on this ability, as do visual abstractions. Modernist and contemporary art often question the value of traditional draftsmanship — the value of “the hand” — but I want both physical and mental attachment to the act of drawing.
For me, drawing is not image duplication. It is interpretation — my particular reading of realistic subjects. In my art‑making, psycho‑motor action binds thought and movement; each mark becomes a negotiation between perception, memory, and the body’s choreography of making.
Drawing Across the Decades
Psycho‑motor immediacy in which perception and the physical sweep of the hand work together to locate form and presence.
Psycho‑motor calibration shaped by perception, tonal judgment, and coordinated movement — building layered space through continual adjustments of color and interior light.
Refined psycho‑motor integration in which perception, memory, and practiced movement converge into a unified, distilled visual language.
Each theme above traces its development across decades. Click a title to explore the archive introduction.
The Core of Persuasive Drawing
Persuasive drawings — whether realistic or abstract — must come from a developed mental and physical core. My most influential teacher Peter Agostini expressed this in his own way.
A Master Teacher’s Approach
“Even when I would model something I would try to give it the feeling that whatever I had underneath was held down by the skin. Always the outside holding the inside in. And I think this is primarily what I still do all the time. I try to get as much force coming out and I try to hold it back with a skin.” — Peter Agostini, American Modernist Sculptor, Watercolorist, Printmaker
Agostini’s statement about making sculpture expresses the way he taught drawing. He seldom spoke at length during drawing instruction. He was certainly capable of articulating the essence of an artwork with words, but he recognized the limits of words while teaching. When he saw that you were stuck, he would sit down and draw — moving the pencil across the page while saying, “you see.” He never completed your drawing. Usually, he moved the pencil just above the surface, from one point to another, and your eyes followed the gesture while you referenced the model.
His demonstrations were always about form and surface in space, (not line and contour) the result of an increased awareness. You began to understand that drawing involves what is seen and what is unseen but understood. Not physiology but looking. Over time, I developed the habit of sustained visual observation — the role of psycho‑motor action. You “see” the skin (your understanding) emerge, holding back the force of the form. I believe that is what he meant.
Drawing in Practice
Graphite on paper, this drawing study investigates how form can be established without relying on a focus on contour. The marks follow the directional flow of the back, building volume through pressure, rhythm, and the subtle shifts of the musculature. By withholding the full outer boundary, the drawing asks the viewer to read mass through internal movement rather than silhouette. It’s a study in how line weight and absence can assert presence.
Back of Human Figure
Graphite on paper, this drawing is concerned with gestures and spatial projection. The figure is intentionally shown incomplete; it examines how a partial form can still occupy space and initiate engagement. Line becomes both structure and motion, describing weight, balance, and the implied continuation or completion of the body. The fragment becomes a way to focus perception on the essential directional forces of the pose.
Partial Figure
Graphite on paper, this drawing shows the stylistic tension of Precisionist Illusionism by rendering a natural organic subject with the calculated discipline of an architectural study. The composition balances tangible three-dimensional graphite volume with sharp, controlled graphic values (i.e. with the meticulous smooth gradients) that freeze the plant in a state of quiet stillness.
Cactus Plant
Pastel on paper, this small pastel drawing is a study in how light behaves when it passes through and around glass sharing an affinity to Impressionism. Unlike the two figure drawings, which rely almost entirely on using line, and the plant drawing showing the hyper-controlled, meticulous nature of smooth gradients, this piece builds form through color and cross‑hatched shading. Glass demands that you track multiple simultaneous conditions: contour, internal refractions, cast shadow, and the shifting temperature of light. Color becomes structural information, recording the direction of illumination and the distortions within the material. Even at this scale, the drawing becomes a negotiation between perception and projection — seeing what is actually there and translating it into marks that assert space.
Little Glass Elephant