New approaches to drawing.
I haven’t drawn for ages and ages. Drawing has become defunct in my practice, I rely on photography and writing. I’ve been looking for a new way of approaching drawing, something to make it relevant again.
I found a good book, it had a few projects whereby a typical aspect of the process of drawing was altered in some way. Most of these projects were familiar from my B.A, but I hadn’t tried them for a while. So for instance, drawing: from memory, with two pencils tied together, from a distance, without taking your eyes of the subject, with the other hand, by feeling the subject, etc.
Still, it was a bit of a revelation, it made me look at drawing with a new perspective. The most interesting approach was drawing with your eyes closed and feeling the subject. So that’s what this drawing here is – by feeling every aspect of my face I made marks to describe what I could feel. Eyelashes, mouth.
What was interesting was that it loosened up my hand, each mark was descriptive, but more essentially it was free since I did not have to consider what the image I was making looked like.
Imagine doing this with a life drawing, urgh! You’d have to be either brave or know them well!
Scotney Castle: 500 Lies
(jigsaw puzzle pieces)
Jigsaw puzzles are useful to me: I have a healthy interest in boredom. And c. shops are full of jigsaws.
There’s nothing more to this at the moment, just playing around. No concept, no reason. So I’m leaving it at that.
Oh, it’s 500 Lies because there were only 443 pieces.
One technical issue though, originally I wanted to fix all 500 pieces together on top of each other with glue. I started but inevitably gravity won’t hold up a wobbly tower of tiny bits of cardboard. Next puzzle tower will have to be drilled through if if it’s going to stand.
Playing around with a piece of work or idea can be useful in itself, it’s almost a means to an end. Really it’s about making something without thinking about it – employing intuition maybe?
It doesn’t have to do or be anything. But I know that this approach can only go so far, at some point a conceptual thought process is required to move it along.
Doillies
I don’t know why but I’ve bought ALOT of doilies from c.shops lately. I’m sure I bought them along the lines that they had some sort of possible function. Once I start buying something then I’m always on the lookout for it. I didn’t buy them to use around the house.
I had a quick idea yesterday – to get out the can of fluorescent red spray (my fav) and use the doilies as a stencil. Mmmmmm. Interesting.
Then I spent an hour – yes an hour – tracing each little doiliey hole onto a sheet of squared graph paper. Quite a good result although the pen is too faint to upload a pic here.
It’s not easy working and trying to make your own work as well. That’s an understatement I know. I’m trying to do something whatever it may be, every evening at least. This blog is actually making me work since I’ve promised myself to add a new post every night.
Wondering if writing a blog has the same effect on anyone else?
The Meeting
see blog posts 2, 3 and 9.
If you’ve seen my blog posts you will know that I’ve been working on a project called The Meeting on and off for a while now. Too long in fact.
This project consisted of a meeting held outside by the garages out the back, around a small Ikea table (rescued from the dump). I asked four people who are not artists to discuss contemporary art. It produced around 16 photographs and a transcript.
The table was an important part of this meeting. looking back it served as a physical rooting point for each person, they stood around it, shuffled a bit. I took the table apart last week really just looking at it and asking if it was something worth keeping as an artifact.
I’ve decided to transfer the transcript directly onto the wood, probably with black permanent marker. It won’t be in any particular order and it needs to look rough as though the notes were scribbled quickly. My only dilemma at the moment though is how to re-construct the table. Here are some initial ideas I’ve had….
The table is a monument to the meeting. I’m planning on holding another meeting soon in the same place with the re-constructed table. Perhaps this table is representative of of the four participant’s feelings about contemporary art?
Wallpaper Portrait 2#
In danger of repeating myself (I know I’ve said this before), but this blog has given me some benefit of distance to my work. I get to see it printed and isolated from it’s usual environment. Which is a good thing.
The second Wallpaper Portrait admittedly is a bit spooky; this was unintentional. My man wrapped the wallpaper round himself and I cut out two rough holes for his eyes and in the print you can see his eyes peeking through. The printing ink didn’t catch so well on the vinyl (that’s OK too) creating a flat colour pane.
I’ve learnt not to be too precious about my work now, intuition and sod’s law are assets.
