When I am drawing I remember previous drawings and drawing decisions I have made. This current drawing project for Studio Practice is to spend one hour on each drawing, and then to link them to each other within an animation. Each drawing will inform the others, and they will in a sense create a narrative of sorts, but I intend to edit them as I would writing, and to rearrange and reorder them when I am finished.
I am starting with pencil and paper. I may yet bring in colour, other materials, or anything, but the moment of choosing comes within the drawing hour, unedited and uncensored.
I am always looking to subvert myself when drawing, not to revert to favourite solutions, and to find a new aspect I haven't given myself before.
Something I have figured out before in drawing which I expect I may continue is to mix abstract with recognisable things - the eye seems to tire quickly of abstract, and likes the interplay and suggestions of figuring things out.
Universal decision - A3 size.
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1. 6th July 2012
Let the pencil decide and take me for a walk. It looks a bit like nerve endings, tearing, reconnecting, but I tried not to think too much about that and follow it through in an obvious way. Dug in intensely for black, held back for more delicate intricate marks. Felt intense and emotional to draw for drawing's sake again.
2. 7th July 2012
The rationale of this project is that once I start drawing I continue. I do not change paper or stop drawing even if I think I have ruined a bit. I keep going on the understanding that there is a way to resolve within the drawing. Again the look of nerve endings. I wanted to create something imbalanced, with isolated, unrelated areas. I want to let a different part of my mind take over, rather than thinking in words. Imagining future drawings to make.
3. 8th July 2012
Of course I find myself reverting to past logic and solutions in drawing - marks and shading I like to make. How often in an hour the desire to start again occurs, and how swiftly the hour passes. This drawing is a little landscape-like, or an elongated nodule. While I am drawing I think of this, and how to not make it look like these things. Mainly I am thinking about the time element of this total piece, and how these hours will become one hour, and how much I trust in this process to become something.
4. 10th July 2012
This method of drawing means that I continue for the full hour, even if I feel I've finished before, and continue drawing. There is always more to do or less to do in a drawing - it's interesting to let time decide, and trust that the inner clock is working to that. This drawing had a fizzy energy, deliberately controlling the uncontrolled feel of the pencil. I see it as a rip or fissure. I like the feeling of drawing without reference to scale, that it could be read microscopic or cosmic.
5. 10th July 2012
This drawing changed much as I was doing it - I feel I finished it then had to continue to ruin it a couple of times because of the time discipline. I drew it with both hands, mostly drawing upwards on the page. Although this is not visually a particularly successful result, it was an interesting process to keep going, and to use both hands. The photo doesn't really convey all the interesting marks and rub outs on the page. I like all those indentations and suggestions of digging in and rubbing out. In truth I didn't actually look at the drawing that much while I was doing it, concentrating much more on the feelings - I felt like Hannibal Lecter giving in to his killing impulse in Silence of the Lambs.
6. 11th July 2012
I wanted to make a drawing with an imbalance, with elements that didn't fit, but would play off each other. I had the scribbly bit, and a big round cluster of more organic shapes that I thought I would obliterate. I got more involved in the obliteration, and would like to make drawings with the original intent, with an underneath drawing more visible. The drawing still needed something that wouldn't fit. I though of what the painter Jules de Goede once said to me at Middlesex in a tutorial, when I was doing alot of centred, glowing work - he said to try to fit in something odd, something different, like a pink straw. This drawing needed something illogical - the strip of masking tape.
7. 13th July 2012
Yes, I'd missed a day. This drawing is bodily. Perhaps like vegetation, growth, burgeoning. I was thinking about a photo I once saw of an incredibly fat woman, who had peculiar blobs growing out of places which don't usually get that fat - out of ankles and elbows as well as more obvious bits. It was totally illogical. Nature tends towards pattern and parallel. The thought of this drawing became to produce an organic-like cluster that still had some logic, and suggestions of what it might be. An hour is barely enough time to blend it into the right look.
8. 14th July 2012
I wanted to make a delicate and intricate drawing. This really was pencil-led. I started off thinking of drawings I have seen of crumpled paper, but don't tend to want to draw literal representations. It is a network, a membrane, also map-like or a microscopic view of lines in a palm. I think of all these things as I'm drawing, but try to keep it non-specific, suggesting all those things. This drawing is like a threshold, containing within or without.
9. 16th July 2012
The hour timing is interesting, as it makes me go past the point of an effective and spare drawing, and into a place where I must ruin it a bit, and then create something new. Like a plant, roots, network, like blood vessels. Something connecting to something else - the density of network connections.
10. 17th July 2012
All this writing is me thinking aloud about drawing and other related thoughts, on the nature of thinking and time. As I hoped, in the end the meandering led to create something else. The eye can't help filling in the lines and shapes to create figures, to imagine bodies and figures, to imagined the shapes coloured in. It's interesting that writing gives no clue or dynamic, in shading and emphasis, and can only be decoded with the right syntax. The overall meandering lines tell something, but you never know what may be hidden in plain sight. Thinking of concrete poetry, fluxus, and especially minimalist music by Steve Reich, which repeats over and over with small variations in repitition, very like waves of thought.
11. 18th July 2012
Obviously flower-like, but also shadowy and reminiscent of '50's wallpaper. I still expect myself to pick up colour one day, or to draw something more recognisable, but I go with the initial idea or what the initial pencil marks suggest. This time I didn't feel the need to subvert or ruin the drawing in order to retrieve it - that is the usual process which I feels accesses the leap I am looking for into what the drawing really is - where the drawing mind decides.
12. 20th July 2012
This drawing is a classic ruined piece. I had one drawing, the underneath dense concentric swirl, and more time for my hour. I tried out a couple of extra marks, and I had to continue over all.
13. 21st July 2012
This is an unusual pattern-type drawing for me. It's amazing how long it takes to make the point of an idea, rather then drawing a few, then writing etc. I'm don't think it comes across at all in the drawing, but what I was thinking about all along was the way what we are and what we do always has to fit in to other patterns and constructs. I was also wondering if I would do something else to the drawing once all the shapes had filled up. It felt like a good solution to go over some lines with darker shades of pencil to create shadows.
14. 22nd July 2012
Knots without scale. Density. Placed. Inner or outer. Micro or macro scale. Movement imploding.
It was a pleasure to draw this and see it form. Akin to tendrils of smoke, or a molecular network. Galaxies also seem to form according to wind and water patterns. What I could have smudged in seconds with a graphite stick, I dotted for an hour. I like either bold and dramatic drawings, or else delicate and intricate - extremities of both.
16. 24th July 2012
Another drawing which started out as one thing and ended up as something else. The truth is, I like being in that uncomfortable state when I have ruined something and have to retrieve it. I like allowing that inventive and resourceful part to take over, and believing that an inner clock is timed to complete in one hour. I turned this drawing into a structure containing energy, but what I really like about it is that it doesn't really make sense - it is illogical even according to its own terms - the boundaries and what contains what. I seem to know what I am doing while I am drawing, although I would like also to retain control of the aesthetic in some drawings, rather than let the process take over - in other words, sometimes to imagine something I would like to draw first, and then render that, instead of following what happens.
17. 25th July 2012
This drawing started as a jazzy spacey 1950's code. It's good to draw illogically, to make sure shapes don't make sense. I drew the clusters first, and then decided it needed background. It's a plane or field of network. In the flesh the eye keeps following different lines, making connections, following lines.
18. 26th July 2012
Sometimes I simply imagine something and try to draw it. I imagined something very like this form, oddly on the page like that. It seems to suggest a dense tar puddle made out of the wrong element.
19. 27th July 2012
In order to draw the negative space, alot of the other must be filled in. I like the changes of direction and unevenness. I think I've decided now not to move into colour with this series of drawings, and to stick to the few pencils I am already using. And I'm ready to look back and through what I have done, and possibly use some as starting points for new drawings, so that I have alot of interrelationships, and build up its own visual world.
20. 28th July 2012
I broke my rules for this drawing. I abandoned one and started this, and so it took less than an hour. Overall, it was an hour in the making, as the earlier lead to this. My method of drawing and seeing where it leads me, ruining it in order to rework it and end up somewhere different, sometimes simply ruins a drawing. I like this band of energy. It is like music.
21. 29th July 2012
This was highly energetic and sporadic to draw. It is the kind of drawing you can only tell near the end if it is going to work as intended. I wanted to make something to read into, like those childhood times gazing at certain walls and wallpapers, picking out faces, objects. To draw, it's a balance of light or dark, size and shape. I love the idea and will try more and different ways of doing this.
22. 30th July 2012
Network connections, perhaps, or map contours. Also I was thinking of dark light ideas, light invisible to the human eyes that travels in counter-intuitive ways - through solid objects.
And sometimes drawing is like a secret diary, a cathartic outpouring of secret code and feeling. It feels better to constantly subvert the line and shape, to always make it awkward, to let everything not fit and allow it all to be irregular. I do love these off-cuts shapes. I have used off-cuts in work before, and still have a bag of plywood off-cuts ready to dig out. They are so irregular, proper byproducts, not occurring in nature.
While I drew today, I remembered a tutor at university looking at some drawings I had there - he remarked something about my mark-making. I relived some secret outrage - mark-making! As if they could have no attempt at meaning.
24. 1st August 2012
I'm getting somewhere with this. I allowed this to become like deliberately like mountains early on, and followed through. I could have gone on, but decided to keep to the hour. It is both logical and illogical. To scale and not to scale. Remembered and imagined. Abstract and representative. Recently in drawings I've been preferring to link up lines. This is minimalist, repetitions with variations. This is the way I will go. I will probably do alot more mountain drawings, but want to apply this principal to other things. I feel I've connected something. I'd like to paint these.
25. 2nd August 2012
I started off thinking rivers. It's more obviously roots, shadows. I've long drawn equally with pencils and erasures. I almost like to think of drawing in a malleable or sculptural way. I like to try to incorporate all those byproducts of drawing, making the lines indistinct, suggesting movement.
26. 3rd August 2012
I would have spread this drawing across the entire page, but actually, this took the whole hour. What I was thinking of and drawing was something like a stoney bank in stark sunshine, when the shadows and angles pick out abstract shapes, especially in high contrast or an overexposed photograph. Sometimes nature isolated is extremely abstract. I'd like to continue this drawing or one like it. I also think of how details of painting often reveal the tricks of illusion that figurative painting comprises.
27. 4th August 2012
Part of the idea of drawing for one hour, a complete hour, and only an hour, and on one piece of paper, is to get beyond initial ideas. I like spare drawings, and sometimes they look complete in that way after 20 minutes, but the drawing must go on. I feel I am overdoing and ruining, but then comes in the new ideas - what if I bring in another element here, and so on. These cross-lines were such, but they led me somewhere new with more good ideas. They interrupt, suggest depth and movement, and still balance somehow with the more streamy, frondy background.
At this stage I must also mention that the limitations of my chosen medium is really kicking in, in that I wonder about using colour, different paper, all sorts of alternatives I could use. I am not, obviously redefining in any way what drawing might be, I am sticking to pencil and paper and looking inwards in drawing. I am keeping ideas and any inventiveness contained within ideas of line and the actual marks. The other stuff, using metal, wire, dust, is for another time, and of course, in time, the drawings will exist in a different time, when they become moving image.
28. 5th August 2012
I took the cross lines from the day before as the starting point for this drawing. In drawing you have to mean every line, and the eye has to agree. The element of chance brings new complications and imbalances to the eye, which it must then correct by adding more complications. After doing these cross lines to their natural conclusion, I felt the drawing needed something else to imbalance and counteract, and so I added the edge in the concluding minutes. I like that the cross lines look like some directions of energy, moving, or strands of substance acting in a certain way, whereas the edge brings more of a manufactured or made contrast, as if something completely different is happening off the edge.
29. 6th August 2012
I again drew bright stark shadows of rock. Early on I knew I would smudge and erase later to get this look of movement. I like to move around shading like this, as if pencil is plastic. Rock, fire, depth.
Interestingly, after this drawing, so about half way, I felt for the first time doubt. I wonder that the drawings are too vague and introspective to create a strong moving image piece, that it will have to be too watery and subtle. Should have been more narrative, I think. They're too internal, too aspecific, too abstract, not really about anything. Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. Keep going anyway and hope for better thoughts.
I imagined this drawing while I was put walking - something quite like it. I added the side part for nicely balanced imbalance. As to yesterday's bout of doubt, well, forget that. After this current drawing project, I can't imagine not maintaining the discipline of an hour's drawing every day, perhaps with varying rules.
31. 8th August 2012
A delicate, barely there drawing. Insect wings, skeleton leaves, transparent petals. Not true flower formations. The pencil skims the surface of the paper, suggesting to me possibilities of other delicate drawings, and the power of suggestion and subtlety in visual imagery.
32. 9th August 2012
This looks very like a previous drawing, and yes, it is a page of scribbles, but not really. It was all drawn with writing action, from tiny to big, forwards, backwards. I was vigilant not to deliberately make recognisable letters, but just to write, or move my hand as if writing, as fast as possible for the hour. It felt good to do this, as if I really was writing and expressing my thoughts in writing. I was wondering if towards the end of the hour the drawing would develop or if an idea would occur to transform it - sometimes drawings can accumulate into something else, but no. I think in this case it felt better to do than it ended up looking - it doesn't offer anything else, and yet it's busyness is part of the overall project and can be an interesting texture or detail in the moving image to come.
33.10th August 2012
As if someone had left an empty frame over the paper. That's it, really, except I like to make things offcentre and awkward.
34. 11th August 2012
Imploding bursts of energy, very intense to draw. I aim for this lack of scale, as if they may be enemy warships, flies, or aggressive viruses. They eye has to decide quickly about spacing, etc. It's very much planned spontaneity and placed randomness.
Today I found myself imagining the moving image from all these drawings for the first time, moving in and out of positive and negative, blending magnified detail, adding colour casts. I will do these, but have yet to pin down what it all to be about, and what ideas I will be exploring through this, other than the visual ballpark. I have found that abstract or non narrative pieces must be really about something, otherwise they are just posh screensavers.
35. 12th August 2012
This was just sheer enjoyment to draw. Imaginary maps, islands. I could go on all day, drawing more and more of these, so perhaps I will just do that sometime. I call this drawing North.
I'm wanting to draw towards something figurative or decodable now - thinking about the moving image. I'm really beginning to imagine it now. I may well merge the drawing with some video footage, but as well as it being rich in imagery, I want it all to be clear, or at least clear in an abstract way, by which I mean I'm not going to just cram things in, but find the reasons for inclusion., and what ideas they resolve and express.
36. 13th August 2012
Again pure pleasure to draw. Perhaps thinking of Klimt trees, and Art Nouveau - anyway, nature can be quite easily stylised or abstracted - looking through a frame or a lens. It's so much easier to draw trees, branches, though memory and artistic choice. The drawing can be seen in other ways, as a network of negative space. Again, I'd like to continue and do many more of these, and with a better pencil.
37. 14th August 2012
Maps again.This time islands are within islands, giving a bit of distorted perspective look. It also started looking to me very much like rust, or metal fatigue while I was drawing, so I looked at it both ways - map and metal. I wanted to draw maps again because it is so very enjoyable to think of these imaginary places, but I must have a new idea, a variation - it seems like cheating to me to repeat a drawing even though it may look entirely different.
38. 15th August 2012
Hard to explain this. I just though of the idea and did it, wanting another reason to draw map-like lines. The lines had to follow through from the scribbles - in these drawings I have wanted to visually link lines together. I think it draws the eye through, unless you deliberately want to interrupt it. I surprised myself with this idea, and have opened up more ideas about how to incorporate vastly different elements in map drawings and others. Of course, they are not actually maps.
39. 16th August 2012
Both horizon and rupture. Again, I imagined this drawing, so set out to see if I could produce what I had envisaged. I like the paradoxical idea, and the not-quite optical illusion.
I'm think alot now about the moving image, and the time element. Sixty hours into one hour. I want to have some sense of that time in it, but don't really know how as yet. Some things will just have to wait until the making starts, but there is a part of my mind ruminating and pondering on this time anomaly.
40. 17th August 2012
Little dense awkward gem shapes. Takes time to fill in, and so the page is not quite full. I had been aiming for the final minutes, when I smudged with an eraser. Before that, the black and white starkness was quite effective, and so I hoped that would be maintained with the smudging, which to my eye, it does while adding that suggestion of movement.
I realise that it is quite a backwards way to approach moving image, to create the imagery first, and then try to see where it leads me and what it all may mean.
41. 18th August 2012
All one line. Looks less map-like without separate islands, but it's more or less the same type of lines. Looks more like a cross section of some agate, or the brain, or a cabbage, or again, spilt metal like lead, coagulating. I like that the imagery flits between all these and more if you follow the line.
I don't know if it looks particularly Scottish, or Northern in a Scandinavian way, but that's what I'm thinking all along, all those twists and turns of the coast, driving through glens and coming across lochs. Imagining the places through maps, following the illogical logic of nature.
42. 19th August 2012
It's so hot, it's difficult to think and draw. I actually fell asleep for a bit during this drawing. I just thought of a different idea and way of getting to draw maps again. I'd like to try different formations.
43. 20th August 2012
While I was doing this drawing, I was planning some shading, smudging, perhaps shadows, but it surprised me in the end that it actually took me the whole hour to complete as it is. I was thinking flowers, in a way, but also stones, and perhaps sand or ripples of shell layers. Quite wallpaper-like.
44. 21st August 2012
Like clouds. I took off my glasses and defocussed my eyes to draw. I used to do that alot. Coming in and out of focus is like coming in and out of a dream state. The judgement is whether it looks right, feels rights.
45. 22nd August 2012
More deliberately and consciously like clouds. It's pleasurable to think about clouds and skies I have seen. Drawing can be like paint or something more solid, the way it can be moved about with erasers, detailed with a touch. It's also like a black and white version of abstract painting I used to do. I could do this all day - drawing sky. I will do more. I don't need to look to draw, as I have been looking at that all my life. The drawing is as changeable as the sky.
46. 23rd August 2012
And sometimes drawing can be therapeutic, and a way of expressing some anger or frustration. It can be a way of making a five sided square, letting the scaffolding all fall down. When drawing itself seems a bit futile and irrelevant, the process makes something of it, turns it into a structure and gives it a logic.
47. 24th August 2012
And again, at times drawing is just a good place to go, to imagine.
I like drawings to sit in between different things all at once - flames, mountains, clouds, cartoons.
48. 25th August 2012
Migraine visual disturbance. This is towards a representation of the disorientation and defocus. And it has lead me to using a touch of colour. I was...satisfied with this drawing, and what it suggests.
49. 26th August 2012
There are irreconcilable elements which we have in our minds. Sometimes we are very aware of the clash. Sometimes there is no fitting together. I wanted to have ill fitting disharmony of elements.
Again a touch of colour. Colour has now happened and is here.
Have been drawing but not uploading. I had a bit of a break when I went away on holiday, although I had brought drawing things with me. Since breaking the one hour a day discipline, I found it a little difficult to resume, but have done so. It was better to think through where the drawings have lead me, and to start to gather all those thoughts together into a possible final piece. I have decided, or realised, that the animation will based on a sort of mapping idea, or place. Also it feels good to draw maps, contours, skies and places, and to use colour. I like this flat, subtle use of colour, as if colour casts or reflections. While I am drawing, I am also imagining the images in black and white negative, and colour negative.
I have also started film making, trialing what I will do with all these drawings:
It's time to start resolving and gathering together, rather than exploring more. I intend to keep up the drawing discipline beyond this project, and apply different perimeters for other projects.
From here I forgot to record exact dates of drawings.
From here I forgot to record exact dates of drawings.
50.
I thought this drawing was successful until I stepped back to look at it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I like opposing elements uncompromisingly put together in a drawing, so perhaps there is more to develop here.
51.
I think this drawing was more enjoyable to do than to than to look at. It needs more doing with it. All those shapes may indeed be different and interesting, and may speak of a controlled flow, but there is no real reason for a viewer to ponder it. It is material. It is for me to use and transform. I think it will form a useful bridging piece for the moving image, which other drawings will play off from.
Maps again, and I was thinking about how quickly I allowed myself to choose each colour. colour can be either carefully considered, or else chosen in a split second. Either can be argued for, and I could pretend that each colour is considered and deliberate.
I thought this drawing would turn out looking better in the end, but still I like the idea of layers of maps, splats, and how colour can both signify and deceive.
I adored drawing this and watching it happen. It's an illusion I love to immerse myself in, the idea of an endless landscape and the amazing colours possible in polar places. It's a bit like a messy Escher.
A denseness and an idea for a drawing I just had to do. Only later I think it is perhaps a little like a headache. The touches of yellow.I am looking forward to doing more drawings after this lot.
Now I have finished all 60 drawings, and will upload the rest as soon as the light is good enough to take some photos. I am decided to continue a similar drawing practice, and will probably start with similar defined times and set parameters. The emphasis is now on looking back and looking into these last 60 drawings, reflecting on them, and seeing what new connections I can make between them. It's been interesting to attempt to research as I have gone along, and I certainly found that the more research done, the more opens up, memories are sparked, connections made. I found especially relevant to myself was thinking about minimalism in music. I knew this is a big influence on my thinking, but had not consciously drawn parallels with my visual language before.
I don't know why the last few have stayed in my camera. After finishing 60 I have stopped drawing like this for a while - I think I will adopt this practice occasionally in the future. As it is, I have to look back and see what I have done and where it has lead me.
25th September 2012
56.
This drawing has a glassy quality. It's that, that effect, which I get from this drawing. Layer of lines, erased lines, then more lines, across and between.
I crumpled up the paper and then flattened it and drew the creases, and other clusters. Drawing with the paper. The ruinous scribbles, the shadows, the possibilities.
An action drawing. All drawn up. Lines and lines alone creating a mass or crowd.
59.
An idea following on from previous drawing, but more awkward to draw. Started smudging it out a bit in the middle to slightly obscure it and make it not quite so logical and immediately readable.
60.
And so I end at a good place to begin. A simple idea really that I imagined and then had to try to match what I visualised, and how to get that. Dramatic. A searing fissure into something else. The idea of an indistinct boundary, moving. I like the line going outside of the page,and that it might be any scale imagined.
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