Another 'virtual' on January 25th 2021

 

No! The other way up.

 In my previous posting I described the gymnastics of turning my paper around between the two 10 minute poses, and then the question of which way to present the final drawing, landscape or portrait. I now consider it more relevant to conveying the actual form of the poses to present it in portrait format.

Same approach as last week.

Our model is Wren, and in the first two 10minute poses she is lying on the floor with a high up camera looking along her body firstly from head to feet then from feet to head. After the first pose I turned my paper around so as to place the two poses alongside each other  with a conscious attempt to (partially) superimpose them and employing transparency.

I have turned the paper again, this time thro' 90degrees, in this posting. 

The drawing was made in portrait format but presented here in landscape format.

Wren cleverly presented an exaggerated foreshortening as she lay on her side, with the camera also on

the floor, and with her hands and feet pushed towards the camera. I was immediately drawn towards the toes and fingers which I placed on my paper in complete opposition to their actual location, and I 

then added the other features which attracted. This was a 20minute pose. Two 4H graphite pencils for the basics and emphasis with a single 4B in my dominant hand.

Finally a 40minute pose looking down upon Wren responding to one of Lucien Freud's contorted lying poses, with me entering a  de-construction/re-construction process. Not sure about the outcome....yet. 

 

Assemblages, and the issue of planning a life-drawing response.

Recently came across Deleuze & Guattari and their concept of assemblages, which seem to have productive implications for almost every conceivable field of knowledge and artistic practice. This refers to an act of putting various fragments, divergences or singularities together in order to compose a piece. So we can see its relevance to creating a score for a musical performance, and when synthesising technology and space for architecture. This 'deliberate design approach' equally applies to many paintings, sculptures and drawings.

However, I have claimed on many occasions in this blog that my approach is more appropriately described as that of 'process art'. And I am much happier with this term as I talk of my focus on my creative journey as opposed to focusing on the end product. So, I am saying I am not intentionally composing a piece, but I am intentionally challenging and changing the way I perceive and the way I see. And I am an experimenter in the sense that I draw in order to change myself and in order not to think the same thing as before (reference here to Michel Foucault). 

Patricia Cain in 'The Experience of Drawing as Thinking' talks of drawing as a form of learning, and I try to make conscious my learning which takes place within me during my life-drawing activity.  This raises the big question as to whether one can be conscious of that being experienced during the act of drawing or does one need to step back after the event in order to analyse, reflect and research the event. I talk of life-drawing as a meditative process, by this I mean I do enter a different mental state quite detached from other aspects of life. A most pleasurable outcome of this process is that I very often completely surprise myself as to what I find has arrived on my paper.

I am writing this posting the evening after I attended Andrew's first virtual life-drawing session of 2021 on Monday January 11th. But the above thoughts are from my note book and were jotted down about 3 or 4 days ago and I saw the thinking taking place as a (probable) preparation for Monday evening. I even went as far as writing down about how I  intended to approach the session with particular reference to Francis Picabia's 'transparencies' which I have related my drawings to many times previously in this blog. Picabia's transparencies are complex layers of overlapping and superimposing through which one can se what is behind and beyond. So, what was my plan?

We were informed that Wren, our model, would present 3x5minute poses, followed by a 25minute and a 45minute pose. With this in mind I made the following notes:

• the idea that the first drawing/pose sets up parameters for the second
• alternatively, the 3x5minute poses provide a spatial framework for the entry of later poses
• choices: poses at different scales, e.g. a body outline/profile, or poses with different weights of line
• choices: variation of starting points (like the circles and grids from some months ago) a) an earlier drawing (so I can compare mark-making techniques, etc.), b) grid/geometrical structure placed across the paper, c) How about 'a favorite classic iconic image' - a Bellmer, a Modigliani, a Fechin.
• But the principal approach is to engage in the process of 'one-drawing' for the evening: a drawing of complexity, i.e. A Picabia!  

What are the implications of this approach? What are the questions? What are the possibilities?

• a) a single material for mark-making: i.e. graphite pencils, utilizing varying weight of line (and I can employ high variation with weight from my hand/body)
• b) portrait or landscape format? My experience is that with multiple poses a landscape format will encourage me to simply line them up, along the paper. The portrait format encourages vertical exaggeration to take place (if asked for) as well as other responses which can contrast against the verticality.
• c) rather than speedily attempt to engage with the total pose, slow down and (in detail) focus in upon an anatomical part  [see posting of Monday May 6th 2019 'More of Clare: and coming together in a new way' - earlier thoughts on superimposing poses]

So what did take place after all this pre-thinking and planning?

Well, the first drawing (above) seemed to go to plan, Three poses on top of each other, and as they arrived a compositional narrative emerged which linked them together. Many of the above ideas can be seen to have been engaged with and can be identified quite easily. So planning ahead seemed to be working. 

But there the proposed assemblage for the evening halted. I recall I wanted to place the next pose in the same drawing but also recall I was so taken with its beauty of form - a triangulated sitting pose with legs crossed -  that I placed a virgin paper on my easel in respect of it. 

But look what happened with this second drawing (next below),,,,assemblage of a different type........and here I am also a 'collagist' in which I am recognising and selecting those insights and images which are answering my needs of the moment, which I then place together, and transform into something that I have come to believe will result in a composition and an outcome which will be greater (or more) than the sum of the parts. The juxtapositioning of the anatomical parts which takes place on my paper is coming from within myself, from the sequences of my subconscious and natural and automatic selections, from what I am looking at and seeing at any one moment, and during this process I believe I am fully immersed in a meditative state. As I move from one part of the pose to another and transmit and translate each perception to marks on my paper I am re-engaging with the essence of my earlier Cubisme.

As  Bob Dylan said: "All I can do is be me. Whoever that is"

The final 45 minute pose followed a similar path. Towards the end I did become conscious of the emergence of a decisive, distinctive and powerful form up through the centre of the composition which I felt at the time could be worked on and emphasized, but then time was up!

 

A new, or perhaps a slightly different, interpretation of my art.......

I believe that at this moment in time I am perhaps seeking a different vocabulary to describe my approach to my art.

I have been reading Canter, Einstein, Escher and Nancarrow, and have engaged with concepts of irrationality, infinity, unsolvability and chaos. And I have found connections which help me gain insights into what happens when I engage in life-drawing.

Just as Kepler and Galileo questioned the amalgamated paradigm of Platonic philosophy of the past two millennia, I have looked beyond the depiction of the human body as an aesthetically complete form and have begun to understand and gain insights into my personal perceptual processes and their outcomes as revealed in my drawings on my paper. Earlier such challenges were, for example, the Cubists who I have often related my work to. 

I have recently and frequently have engaged with the inexplicability of space. A manipulation of space that can stagger us by beginning on one side and ending completely changed on the other. Fields of attraction that fluctuate in strength. Identical shapes rendered wholly diverse by the merest inflection. An infinity which may be found doubling back from the far horizon ( depths of the paper) to present itself to us as immediately at hand. 

I believe I have engaged in a transformative journey via a metamorphosis and re-interpretation of the human body opened up by new ways of seeing.

Take a look at these two very recent drawings (and many others from over the recent past) and ask 'What is the whole pose?'

I often ask what is it that propels my transformational art into its stage of metamorphosis and reinterpretation of the human body which appears to open up new ways of seeing, and the creation of seemingly impossible anatomical juxtapositions within a configuration of infinite spaces. 

In these two drawings we see impossible figures. Perhaps just a collage of parts. Yet it came from a 'whole' pose.  What is the nature and cause of the transformation process which is revealed by and resulted in this drawing? 

Do these drawings represent impossible objects within a possible space? i.e. something like the Penrose Triangle?

At some time in the past (When, I am not sure) I fell upon the fountainhead which influenced, and perhaps kept re-accurring, during my subsequent journey. When this was (exactly) or what caused it I do not have a clear idea. Probably, it was when I first discovered Paul Fowler's Extreme Poses in Stroud, but it took many visits to become aware of its 'characteristics in my drawing', and much longer to be able to articulate to myself that which was taking place. Perhaps it is only now, that I have an idea of what takes place - But I know, that later (a month, a year, or a decade) I will gain further insight, or have a different interpretation, of events.

It is not surprising that the most significant period in my art is focusing upon my exploration of space. I am an Architect! And however much  of my life I have devoted to exploring ecological and social/societal dimensions of the built environment that now I have little or no formal connections with architecture (except completing the building of my d-i-y self-build home) my in-bred engagement with 'space' seems to have survived.  So this is not a conscious pre-occupation with spatial issues, or with 'space' as a fundamental concept in my seeing and my perception of things. It is from within myself. It was there whatever happened. Deep within me as an Architect. 

In the above two drawings you see a 'superimposition', you see 'transparency', you see 'overlap', you see 'morphing', but I am claiming that there is also evidence of an embedded engagement with fundamental spatiality issues of infinite space and 3-dimensional complexity which is resolved and transformed through a 2-dimensional medium. 

In my drawings, at every point we can identify the shapes we see: a foot, a breast, an arm, a facial profile, a nipple, a knee, etc., but we can only postulate what these shapes grew from, what the pose actually is. 

Sometimes I feel I am engaging with bounded infinities and at other times un-bounded infinities. And during the making of a drawing I move between them, but quite unconsciously. Convergence on a point, takes place alongside a limitless divergence into and around the figure/pose/body. 

Escher himself advanced the issue of visualising objects or concepts which are wholly "inexplicable". I don't go this far, or enter into these extraordinary concepts. I just draw what I see - and the outcome can be explained - but perhaps only up to a point - the rest is mystery, and I hope will remain a mystery. So there will always be something more to explore and to analyse. Max Bill talks of an idea which I like: the "inexplicable" art. 

Escher explored the boundaries of the impossible in his own art. He could construct impossible 3-dimensional objects within possible spaces of his 2-dimensionally represented worlds. Escher warped space and drew our attention to the uncertainty and relativity of perception. His world was a continuous transformational process, never fixed and only partially predictable. I feel I am now in his world. 

 

Picabia here I come........

Tomorrow we will have another virtual life-drawing session by Andrew with himself as the model.

Andrew has let us know the following poses: 1x15minutes, 1x25minutes and 1x45minutes. I prefer the longer pose. So this is good. I am proposing to make the most of the concentration required to address the longer pose, but also to attempt something which I have not previously experienced. I will place all my responses to all of the poses on one A1white cartridge paper.

So, there will be overlap, super-imposition, different scales, one pose upon another. There will be transparency, perspective and depth, There will be a spatiality within the confines of the frame of the paper. 

There will also be confusion and ambiguity. There will also be a morphing of parts. There will be unexpected and unanticipated anatomical juxtapositionings, all of which will surprise, and hopefully delight by their bizarre emergence. 

As I approach this experimental process what are my questions? 

My constants are: an A1 sheet of cartridge paper, portrait format (this I am familiar with so here I am within my comfort zone. This aspect is a controlled variable). What do I draw with? Most recently, with the models Wren and Fra, I have frequently reverted to and exploited my big thick stick of willow charcoal, with very satisfying outcomes. I use this in my dominant right hand. But previously for a long time now I have exploited drawing with a fine-liner pen in each hand: hence the nickname of '2pencilbob'. I have also for a number of years enjoyed graphite pencils, ranging from 4H thro' to 9B (although I have rarely found the harder leads to be useful). My thinking is that I will need to use a diversity of mark-making materials in order to distinguish and differentiate between my responses to each pose as I place them on top of or adjacent to each other. Picabia used variety, sometimes heavy bold outlines of faces interplayed with much more delicate and sensitive drawings of whole bodies and architectural features. The overall constant in this coming session will be 'line'. Tonal engagement will be kept away (except where a line indicates tone). The weight, and the intensity, and the power, and the depth, and the quality, and the characteristic, of each line will be differentiated. THIS IS MY INTENTION. 

What is my approach to be? I will not place the first pose over the whole paper using a heavy line. I will probably commence with fine-liner pens, drawing small and subdued, and with minimal impact on the paper. I will probably gradually build up a sequence of forms which overlap to a limited extent. Marks then may become bolder. Truth is: I don't know. 

Now, As so often recalled, pre-planning goes out of the window soon as one sits and engages with the model. Can't wait to witness what happens this time.....................keep in touch!

AND, This is what happened........

Three poses and a selective response to each: 

a) an arm using 4H graphite pencils

b) from the foot right up to the head using fine-liner pens in each hand

c) a lovely perspective pose, foot to the fore, simply outlined with my big thick willow charcoal stick.

Afterwards I then quickly dipped my finger into my pot of charcoal powder to transform my line drawing into a 3D sculpture. 

The virtual session (which started at 19.00hrs) finished at about 20.40hrs followed by us all showing each other our drawings and enjoying a brief discussion.

I then photographed my drawing and posted it on the group's 'Cluster' so that we can all see each other's output and make comments on them. I then added my pieces to this posting which I had previously written.

Wren on December 7th 2020

This was a pose of about 70 minutes, with a fine-liner pen in each hand making marks simultaneously.

And I now, in relation to this drawing want to add a few quotes to do with the art of Francis Picabia who I have found in the past has helped me understand something of my own approach to, and engagement with, life-drawing:

Picabia said "We must devote ourselves to setting down on our canvases not things but the emotions produced in our minds by things"  I very much go along with this and have for many years believed that what appears on the paper comes from the depths of one's subconscious as one enters into a meditative state.

He also said that " My work allows me to forget this stupid  and abominable age"  Again I feel a relevance to our present condition in which climate change is denied by many, in which the Covid-19 pandemic spreads  worldwide, in which politicians both in the UK and the USA take us into a suicidal future, and war and poverty devastates. The act of life-drawing removes one for a time from these concerns.

A review of Picabia's 'Transparencies' described "a jumbling of elements" that leads to "a mildly irritating mystification". I can see this being applied to the above drawing. And another review referred to "a construction of destruction" (here are the exact words have I used myself in describing my approach as one of deconstructing the pose and reconstructing it influenced by my own perception and emotion).

These other drawings are of very much shorter poses, 5 or 10 minutes. The final drawing is my responses to 5 one minute poses.