Sketch #9: Draw A Gargoyle

Happy Holidays!! I hope you are enjoying your time off with family and friends.

Here's the sketch assignment...as preparation for your in-progress sculpture being done in class, I would like you to choose a real gargoyle from the following link. There are 112 to choose from (from the Washington National Cathedral--please stay with these and don't go to another website for this assignment).

Draw the gargoyle you have chosen from the above link.

Remember:

• incorporate shading and value (lights and darks)
• use only a pencil (graphite)
• draw big--fill up the space
• show me you put work into this

This will be due on block--JANUARY 5TH, 2011
(the week we return from vacation).

Gargoyles and Grotesques

 

Gargoyle on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

Gargoyle on Amiens Cathedral, the tallest Gothic church and largest cathedral in France. 

The only difference between a gargoyle sculpture and a grotesque sculpture is that gargoyles are designed to carry away water through their mouth as in a waterspout.

In modern terminology the term gargoyle has come to be used for both functional and non-functional forms of this whimsical, sometimes nightmarish, form of sculpture.

Examples of Gargoyles are here at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C.

Characteristics

Gothic gargoyles are 

• often creatures 
• sometimes human with creature type features. 

• sometimes they are more creature with some human feature.
• sometimes more than one type of creature is depicted in a gargoyle.  
• an expression of the imagination of their sculptor.  
• less grotesque, more whimsical gargoyles are found in more recent gargoyles.