Chema Nieto Castañón Jul 16, 2019:

I believe the original might be trying to convey the idea of analytical drawing from observation versus analytical drawing from printed sources. Although I agree with Charles that it is a rather curious proposition without any further elaboration.

Toni Castano Jul 16, 2019:

@Comunican The points are irrelevant to me, my answer being chosen as "most helpful" is irrelevant to me. But ii is NOT irrelevant to me to know the "truth" about my attempt to help somebody, an asker, you, I didn´t know before. Please do understand this statement as a general principle of my approach in this forum. Thank you.

Comunican (asker) Jul 16, 2019:

@Toni OK

Toni Castano Jul 16, 2019:

@Comunican No problem, KudoZ-life continues. No drama here, believe me. But be certain that I shall never take part in your posts/questions again. That´s all.

Comunican (asker) Jul 16, 2019:

@Toni Castano Sorry if I've offended you I did thank you and said I appreciated your help before I closed the question. I don't consider it "painful" behaviour or in any way rude of me not to be convinced by your answer (especially when you yourself only graded it as a 3). And I just didn't see the point in speculating further or wasting people's time when I'm going to refer it back to the agency, that's why I closed it. Gracias de nuevo por tu ayuda e interés. Un saludo cordial.

Toni Castano Jul 16, 2019:

@Charles I appreciate again your comments and your feedback as a whole. The only point that really annoys me is the way the asker has closed the question, thus disregarding my opinion as invaluable and before receiving any feedback from his client. What then if the customer should confirm that I was on the right track?. I can only say: Never more, then such behaviour is painful to me.

Charles Davis Jul 16, 2019:

@Toni I agree that it might have been better to leave the question open for the time being. I may have overstated the case in my comment. I think they are referring to "artistic" drawings as instruments of analytical study; I just think that they're probably deluding themselves in terms of the archaeological value of this kind of drawing. If you want to know what it actually looks like, take a photo (or several). An archaeological drawing, to be useful, will not be the same as an artistic drawing. But that doesn't mean your translation is not correct.

Toni Castano Jul 16, 2019:

@Comunican I understand that you are not convinced. I respect you opinion. However, I would have waited for your client´s explanation before closing the question without more ado. It could happen that my answer is not as wrong as you believe. Just for the record.

Comunican (asker) Jul 16, 2019:

Thanks Charles I'll go back to the agency on this one...

Charles Davis Jul 13, 2019:

Hi Comunican I agree with you; this seems to me muddled, and I'm not sure exactly what they're referring to, which is why I'm not proposing an answer.

"Dibujo del natural", i.e. "artistic" drawing that aims to reproduce the actual appearance of objects, has a recognised though secondary place in archaeology. In English I think it should be called "observational drawing"; "life drawing" or "drawing from life" are in practice applied only to drawing the human figure, and "drawing from nature" usually suggests depiction of natural objects, life forms or landscapes. Neither is really suitable for drawings of artifacts.

On the other hand, there is analytical drawing in archaeology, which is a basic and essential method and has its own graphic conventions that are not the same as those an artistic observational drawing would use.

This seems to be mixing the two: I'm not sure whether it means observational drawing for analytical study or analytical drawing from observation (which is really a tautology, since any analytical drawing is necessarily based on observation: you draw what you can see but using a well-established analytical graphic language). I suppose it's probably the former.