Drawing Paul on September 2nd

 

4 drawings at 7Q Gallery

Was asked if I would like to exhibit some drawings as an artist had unfortunately had to withdraw at the last minute. I still have a few of my 'classics' framed so I was pleased to accept the invitation.

At 7Q Gallery in Chepstow from August 26th to September 12th. 7Q is an initiative to support local artists. It is a delightfully simple rectangular space with excellent lighting down on the banks of the River Wye, just a minute from The Boat Inn overlooking the river.

As this blog is my diary this is just a quick posting to record the event.

John: gardener and yachtsman on the left and Paul: also a gardener on the right.

Cacophony with Double Model Perfection beyond.

John: gardener and yachtsman

Bob Fowles  [2014]

Two-handed 2B pencil ‘life-drawing’ on 220gsm cartridge paper

£650.00

drawn with two hands simultaneously

my early ‘squiggle’ technique

the approach of a tonalist (later I became a linearist)

surreal, yet representational

morphism: creating something greater or different to the sum of the parts

 

 

Paul: also a gardener

Bob Fowles   [2017]

Two-handed fine-liner pen ‘life-drawing’ on 220gsm cartridge paper

£500.00

I recently came across the term 'overlay', and said "Yes" this describes what I am doing on the paper. I am drawing one pose, or part of a pose, on top of another, and repeating this a number of times. But this does not fully describe my process. So if I adopt this term of  'overlay', and then place alongside it the terms I have previously employed, i.e. 'superimposition', 'transparency', my 'anagram' process and morphism then I am beginning to describe my current genre. However, I firmly believe that fundamental to my 'process' is my engagement with a 'spatial' aspect. The absence of background or context places the form in space which then permeates through, around and beyond the object.

 The drawing is of parts of two 30 minute poses. The first part to be drawn is the knee and foot diagonally located from top right to lower left with the right foot curled behind it. The two arm and hand drawings were next added. Finally, I recall it took quite a bold move on my part to include the final drawing (I just went for it) of the left knee, shin and foot, from top left to bottom right. At the top of the paper the receding thigh of the last drawing conveniently linked up with the shoulder lines of the two arm drawings to complete an overall holistic, and morphed, form.

 

 

 

Double-model perfection

Bob Fowles   [2015]

Graphite pencil ‘life-drawing’ on 220gsm cartridge paper

£500.00

Yes.......I am referring to the two female models. Robin and Natalie, who I have been drawing for quite a few years now. Their poses are inspiring. They bring out the best in me. And here are two drawings, about 10 minutes each, which have emerged as my favourites from the many I produced over the six days I spent at Stroud and Crickhowell at the end of July.

Why do I like them so much? They are the product of a quick, spontaneous, minimalist response. There is no reworking, no unnecessary lines, no marks of frustration. To start with both hands with hard pencils exploring the basic form and composition, then softer pencils selectively homing in and emphasising the essentials. The drawings are as much a result of my feelings as what I am seeing.
I do recall with both poses that when they formed in front of me I immediately knew what to do. This does not mean I knew what the outcome would be. It means I just knew where to start, and the rest came naturally.

 

 

 

Cacophony

Bob Fowles

Two-handed pencil and fine-liner pen ‘still-life’ on heavy duty cartridge paper

£1500.00

CACOPHONY                        ‘Courtship’ …. Bob Fowles

 This still-life drawing exposes my courtship, as an artist, with the female body.

Life-drawing is my artistic activity. This is my first still-life drawing.

On being presented with a diverse collection of artefacts, in order to make a start, I adopted one of my frequently used life-drawing strategies, a linear journey up through the composition: folded red plastic leads to a brass dish on its side, then the bones of a skeleton framed a pile of books. The narrative which emerged, and then evolved over the 3 days of the project, holds a complexity of concepts, symbols and insights which are very personal to me. 

The nature of the initial mark-making comes from my two-handed drawing technique through which I place emphasis on tonal variation. I am not making a representative drawing of what I am looking at. It is much more like I am exploring my feelings about that which is before me.  Here, I soon became aware of the emerging analogies with parts of the female body as I seemed to be creating an organic interpretation of the objects before me. The initial shapes were also sensuous. I began to fall in love with this lady.

We were moved to a new location at the end of each day. New objects came into view and selections were made to develop the narrative. Just as the edges of the brass dish had transformed into vaginal lips on day one, so the conveniently juxtaposed circular forms of the wheel of a sewing machine and a ship’s brass portal window completed the female form analogy. On day three, from my new location, my reflection in a mirror prompted me to join my lady alongside the stack of books which represent the foundation blocks of her knowledge, and as they pile upwards and in perspective they extend her powers of infinite wisdom. The straight line geometry of the books contrasts with, and so helps emphasise, the drawing’s organic philosophy. The female and the organic are engulfing the masculinity of machines. The male puppet has been decapitated for his voyeuristic stance.

I experiment with ways of dealing with tonal variation. The spherical forms, which derive from the skeleton joints, are drawn with my circular squiggly method using fine-liner pens. The organic growth is drawn using an HB pencil in each hand. These two pencils simultaneously explore the shapes they are responding to, and converge to work together in places to produce tonal intensity. In the lower left hand corner I utilise singular hatching, with one hand, in the drawing of the puppet.

I'm Back

Yesterday, August 5th, was the 5th return visit to Paul Fowler's life-drawing studio at Pegasus Art in Stroud across Offa's Dyke over in England, and although I had felt quite good about the 4 previous sessions, today and 24 hours later, following my photographing of my drawings and consequently taking a good look at them for the first time, my initial analysis is that I feel I am moving. Here are the notes recorded in my note-book this morning:

There is:  a theme;  a characteristic;  a way of engaging;  which can be identified in these works.

• I am eliminating from the drawing the central part of the pose.
• I am focusing my attention on parts of the pose which I see as 'attractive', 'significant' and 'seductive to draw'.
• The product (to me) encapsulates the essence of the pose - emphasises and celebrates the fundamental energy of the pose.
• Yet: my approach to each drawing remains a gamble, not knowing what will end up on the paper. 

In order to achieve these successful outcomes (and this is what I am claiming these drawings are) Am I relying on my 'skills', 'abilities', 'my attitude of freedom in a self-consciously unconstrained process'? If I am, then perhaps at long last I have arrived at something new. I have arrived at somewhere new. And my reference here to 'somewhere' new is to do with my recent conversations with Paul Fowler that I am engaging with concept of 'time' within the processes of my perceptual response, and with the concept of 'space' within the 4th dimensional kinetic dialogue taking place between me, the muse, the paper, and the mark-making which is itself a physical record of all these interactions, connections and meeting points.

[OK. You have read something similar to this before on my blog. And I do admit to similar self-congratulatory celebrations. If this is so then what I am claiming is that my journey remains an evolutionary one. It changes, and keeps changing. Perhaps the fact that I get so excited by the changes is that what appears on my paper is so often unexpected and a complete surprise. However, I could also argue, and could cite numerous examples, that in relation to my claim that I am in many ways a process artist the changes are most significantly taking place in my ways of thinking, in my ways of perceiving, and in my ways selecting. So I will now post the drawings from yesterday after having taken a good look at them and yes I have  surprised myself, but I'm also feeling good about how I think I am thinking]

Our model is Paul the gardener. Very familiar to me as I have drawn him over many years. He is quite extraordinary: on the one hand he has a healthy body from handling chain saws and other garden machinery, and a contrasting feminine side which allows him to project poetry into his poses. He is amusing, totally relaxed, and attempts extraordinary poses around which he is fully conscious of the contribution he is making to the life-drawing event.

In this first pose he is up on a plinth with his head supported in his right hand. I was about one metre from him, seated low at my easel. I immediately knew what I wanted to do. Two parts of the pose hit me. Overall it was the Rodinesque thinker. But the head in the hand and the foot on the edge of the plinth. I started with the hand and an outline of the head. Then on to the toes and the way they came over the edge of the plinth. At this point I had no idea of making a connection between the two, or as I call it morphing the two parts. I recall recalling previous instances of morphing hands and feet, and so this is what took place. The outcome: two selected parts of the pose which when brought together said to me what the pose was about: head on hand, foot on plinth, gravity/weight/support. And a drawing quite bizarre and amusing. I  felt a good start to the morning had taken place.

A long horizontal pose. Not sure why, but I placed the left side of the pose, the buttocks, and dangling right leg, starting on the right of the paper. Then the shoulder and hanging head, which was over to my right came in on the left of the drawing. I, at no point considered the creation of the space, into the depths of the composition, between these two halves of the pose. But a space it is. And the line of the plinth as it enters into the composition from the bottom right of the drawing introduces a strong directional perspective into this central space.

 

In this next pose Paul lies across the plinth. My response is to focus on two key points of contact between the forms of his body and the lines of the plinth.. I start with the hand, his fingers coming towards me, and the close relationship with his head. I suggest the line of his neck, but unsure exactly where this should be. So I go to the other end of the pose and place the weight of his buttocks on to the plinth, but I am very careful not to connect together the lines of these two parts of the plinth. I then have a strong need to resolve the issue of the line indicating the back of his neck. By itself it is somewhat isolated and appears unsure about what it is doing. I felt it needed something going on around it to give it some context and making it more of an event within the composition. And I then become aware of the fingers of his other hand beyond his neck. I need to adjust my position in order to see them clearly, in fact I had to stand up to look over his neck to see clearly what was there and then moved my easel and chair (my cubism again), and in they go. A successful outcome.

Sitting on the plinth, legs dangling down on two sides, head leaning forward and clasped in hands. His right leg is on the other side of the plinth so is hidden from my view. His left leg is directly in front of me. 

There is a beam across the studio and Paul climbs on to it, lying on his front so that arms and legs dangle down. But after about 15 minutes it became very painful for him.

And here is one of my 'Cephalopod' responses. But with a difference.  The final form does not appear in a free space, unlike the last drawing from last week. This one has context. It has grounding. I could not resist the hand clutching on to the beam, and once this had entered the narrative I just had to bring the body and the other hand to make contact with their ground supports.

Conceptual Integration and Blending

 Conceptual Integration or Conceptual Blending is a theory of cognition developed by Fauconnier & Turner which takes elements or parts and their relationships and re-structures them in a sub-conscious process. It attempts to create a new unitary account via the transmitting of the parts through time and space. 

It may be said to re-contextualise by placing or viewing the pose in a new or unfamiliar context, which may suggest to the beholder a different interpretation. 

The emergence and evolution of my 'Cubisme' of the past years has been fairly fundamental to this process. Viewing a pose from a number of different points simultaneously, by moving myself around the studio and including these views in the one drawing. I have been lucky to be able to experiment with this approach in venues which have ample space to move around in. An alternative to this is to have the model take up a number of positions by, for example, turning over on to her back, then her side, facing you and then facing away. Perhaps the most sensual and seductive of this is Picasso's La Dormeuse (Sleeping Nude). Here it is, and there is a most informative analysis and discussion by Charles Stuckey on the Phillips Auction House website:

Picasso's exploratory and searching lines can be seen as not only parts seem to move their positions during the process but the whole pose appears to have moved within the space of the paper over the time of making the drawing. 

So Picasso and Cubism have joined me in my journey. And so has Hans Bellmer. His quality of line, but perhaps more so his Picabian transparency, have become aspects which I have consistently referred to as I explore my own art and come up with insights which I seem to need some confirmation of their validity by finding examples which I feel have a relevance to that which appears in my drawings. 

Here, from my note-book, is my crude reproduction (purely a reminder for me), of one of Bellmer's drawings:

Although it is untitled in catalogues in places it has an accompanying highly descriptive name Cephalopod. This is with reference to the octopus in which all the gangly limbs lead back to a central point of the composition. 

So lets start to post my drawings from July 22nd and July 29th, and perhaps note examples of the above two approaches:

July 22nd: the model is Paul (no, not the gardener from last week, but the Paul new to me on July 8th). He started his series of poses by emerging on his hands and knees from a box, then proceeded to assume a number of positions alongside and upon the box ending up on his back on top of the box. I know you will not be immediately informed by my drawings of the overall form of each pose, but you may be able (after a time) be able to work out what position Paul was taking.

This final drawing I would claim is one of my Cephalopods (well, this is what I will call them from now on).

July 29th: It is Shelley!  An inspirational muse! And posing on a plinth about one and a half metres from my easel, about at my eye level from my seated position.

 Something was different today. Just had a fairly hectic and enjoyable week with grandchildren, daughters and their husbands. Lots of food from the vegetable garden, lots of drinking, and not having seen them much over the past 18 months of covid restrictions. And then a quiet drive, the 40 miles, across the border to Stroud. I described my feeling to a colleague that "I felt I had come to an oasis of tranquility". So a certain relaxed state of mind was present as I started my response to the first pose.

And I do believe something was different today in the way I was feeling about my art, the very relaxed way in which I started each drawing by just selecting a part which caught my attention and then giving very little conscious attention to what followed next and how it juxtaposed with that which had gone before. Compositions were constructed via a force and direction which I seemed to have little conscious connection with. Obviously I did every so often think about what I should focus on next; should I include the straight edge of the plinth; shall I place all the hands and feet together at the base of the drawing; there is a triangular distance space which I must capture defined by arm, leg and torso which will go deep into the paper, etc., etc. But most of the time I was much more conscious of pulling back from making any decisions and just letting myself freewheel into the time allocated to each pose and freewheel into the space within, beyond and around my paper. I was aware however, perhaps more than usual, of the back-and-forth energy flows between myself and the muse. Shelley contributes so much. Today she really struggled in a number of the poses. Not only with numb-dead limbs from her contortions but with the overall ever changing temperature in the studio as the air-conditioner attempted to grapple with the extreme solar heating coming through the roof-lights. 

And as the morning progressed I experienced a new sensation and insight. And this was something really quite new. I began to think that I was touching on something which was superceding anything which had gone before in my life-drawing journey. Previously, and quite often when I felt a breakthrough had taken place, I usually recorded the event, via my self-analytical process, on this blog. Reading back through the posts one will come across these announcements. And I make frequent attempts to generate a descriptive vocabulary at the time. But these adjectives change over time. And they change because as a 'process artist' the way I work evolves. 

Yet, there are some constants. And there are some things which re-occur. And at times I have the sensation that I have been here before. BUT in the main there has been an evolutionary development in my art, with moments of revolutionary change. BUT today, I sense it was different. And the reason I make this claim is that during this morning I developed a gut feeling that all previous and earlier revolutions had been put into perspective and were quite minor in significance. 

To describe and generate a vocabulary about this latest event and feeling about my art is far too early. I talked this over with Paul Fowler, our mentor and tutor and organiser of the Thursday morning life-drawing sessions at Pegasus Art in Stroud, and gained from him confirmation that something special was taking place. 

So here are the results in the form of two-handed graphite drawings on A1 portrait format cartridge paper:

I want to conclude this posting with some notes from my note-book which I jotted down whilst listening to Charles Stuckey's talk on Picasso's La Dormeuse. This exercise preceded the latest drawings with Shelley so their content may well have been a contribution to my claim that a significantly radical move has taken place:

• the searching has a graphic power in itself
• the drawing reveals one's own activity as an artist
• graphic appeal and power are to do with the energy of all the graphic lines that compose her body
• distort the figure so that you can see many sides of the body at the same time
• how to get most of her into the picture as possible
• leave in a state of incomplete resolution - to show the stages of the creative process
• when I include a background line I place the figure against the ground (context), when there are no background lines the figure is free of the ground (free of context) and assumes their own place within space
• the drawing becomes a 'setting of time' (Paul Fowler has talked of this), I see her body, her buttocks, breasts, arms, as they 'exist in the time' it took me to draw them
• the calmness of the model (the pose) and the frantic attempt, the hyper excitement, of the artist, rendering how the model appears to me, and how I am able to project my feelings on to the paper

A concluding consideration:

There is a genre known as hyperrealism: a definition of which is:

• features are exaggerated
• scale is altered
• objects are placed in startling unnatural relationships

This is what I do, but this is only part of my story. 

A 'narrative' joins 'the process'

 Quite an extraordinary day today! It is my third 'real' life-drawing experience after the long period of isolation. Also I've been looking back over recent works, and attempting to come up with some sort of thesaurus which says something about my 'process' (see last posting):

assemblages; fragments; divergences; remix; singlearities; manipulation; multiples; fractured; randomness; scavenging; combinatoric rearrangement; re-contextualise; conceptual integration; random juxtapositioning; de-construction and re-construction; collage; distortion; fractured; fragments; juxtaposing the parts; mutilated; dismembered; distorted; surrealistic; making a drawing with the laws of chance; morphing; transduction; 

All the above, I believe, may be used, perhaps in relation to a specific drawing or a period of drawing, to describe the process of how my drawings come together on the paper and are quite different and independent of my 'spatiality' world in which I use the now very familiar terms, such as: superimpositioning; overlap; transparancy; penetration; depth; the 4th dimension; complexity; layering; differing scales; spatial entanglement; 

I will try to explain today's set up: Paul Fowler had previously designed a zoom sessions in which the model enacted a storey line (I did not take part in this): sitting at a table she received a letter, the contents of which upset her and increasingly caused her distress, and she became animated, the letter became crumpled, her cup was spilled, and her despair resulted in a distorted entanglement with the table and chair. However, today the original female model was unavailable so our long standing Paul (the gardener, not the same Paul as last week) took her place. 

We were to follow the usual format of 5x30 minute poses, to take us through the morning. In each pose Paul was to act out a stage of the narrative.

So, I did five drawings, and right from the start I realised that a number of aspects could give continuity thro' the series: e.g. the spatial and form relationship between the model's leg and the leg of the table.

Here are the five drawings:

Nos 1: Paul's  right leg and the table leg with me focussing on the space bewteen the two. I then superimposed the hand holding the letter. Quite calm and restful at this point

Nos 2:The letter is still held but in the other hand and the head is in the hand as the content of the letter is responded to. 

Nos 3: Distress sets in. The head drops to the table and is buried in the letter. The leg become more stretched out with slight tension in the toes.

Nos 4: The chair slides back as Paul sinks to the floor, head further lowered and arm gaining some support on the edge of the table. The letter becomes crumpled and squeezed. A cup is knocked over.

Nos 5: Finally Paul ends up under the table and gains some support by tightly gripping the table leg. Crumpled letter and mug have ended up on the floor.

"the process of drawing results equally in a drawing of process"

 I am a process artist!

Have been for many years , and often talked about this on this blog.

In a conversation last week, on my return to 'real' life-drawing, I claimed I had little interest in the end product. How it turned out was not particularly important to me. What I am really interested in are the experiential aspects of the following:

• the sequence in which parts of the pose gain my interest, and how these then juxtapose in the drawing
• the diversity in the relationship between artist and muse: dialogue, communication, the sense of sharing the event
• being within a spatial continuity which embraces my mind and perceptual processes, my motor actions which place marks on my paper, the space within, beyond and around my paper, and this then extending to embrace the model and the returning messages she is sending [notice I've started with myself but I could equally argue that the model is the real starting point of any kinetic activity, and perhaps always is].

Today I was at the second real life-drawing sessions after my Covid isolation, and for some reason felt to home in on my love of process. I had yesterday come across the quote which titles this posting. I've thought this for many years but the wording seemed to encapsulate the essence of my approach. In addition to this, for me, the model Paul, was new, and immediately I knew I was reacting differently. I have not yet photographed my drawings and so have not looked at them since placing them in my folio at the end of the session. A peculiar feeling as I am actually unsure as what to expect. You see, I did not take a good look at them, at the time, as I was so attempting to be somewhat conscious and perhaps understand a little of the process I had been thro' each time. 

So, I will be photographing them, taking a good look at them, and upon posting then perhaps saying a few words......... Watch this space!

The return of the real!

Yes! 

At last!

It's Thursday July 1st 2021 and probably some eighteen months since I was in the presence of a live life-model.

Somewhat apprehensive, not nervous, but unsure of the experience ahead of me. Spent some time over the past days looking back through this recording of my life-drawing journey. Why? To make reconnections if necessary. Not really necessary, as I know where I have been. Some of my drawings from 2016 stood out. Two special ladies, Natalie and Robin, curled up together in double-model poses, recollected for me the special relationship which it is possible to create not only between two models but between the artist and the muse. At this time I was well into my two-handed drawing method and technique, exploring within the depths of my paper by squiggles and searching mark-making how I was perceiving the human forms before me. But not only exploring the anatomical structures but at the same time delving into my perceptions and experiencing entering into the extraordinary channels of communication within the spatiality of the life-drawing setting (I've talked of this many time over the years ......... the symbiosis of model/artist dialogue, the artist entering into the depths of the paper/canvas, the shared and supportive culture created in the life-drawing studio, the meditative process of life-drawing itself, having an extraordinary mentor, etc.)

We are relocated up in the roof of the four storey19thC mill which houses Pegasus Art in Stroud. Climbing the staircase up into this space for the first time was a truly welcoming experience. The quality of light and the much greater floor area looked good. We were reduced in number due to Covid restrictions. Eight of us, and our mentor Paul Fowler, and then across the studio I met with Shelly. Her presence was an instant uplift to me and a complete restructuring of my hesitant anticipatory expectations. Why? You only have to scan back thro' this blog over the past three or so years to appreciate the part the Shelly has played in inspirational contributions to my journey.

So, off we went.