Pablo Picasso....Hans Bellmer....David Hockney

My enquiries into my explorations on paper and in my mind, in my life-drawing journey, have made contact with numerous artists, movements and  philosophies. Those connections which are currently most pertinent are noted here.

 

Why these?

At other times I would probably select another group of artists.

So what are the commonalities which I am making which I feel are so relevant now?

1. Understanding the complexities of the perceptual processes.

2. Responding to the parts which constitute the whole, thereby seeing the whole differently.

3. Sensing beyond what we are looking at.

4. Engaging with 'time' and 'space' dimensions.

I have studied the work of these three artists in the past (perhaps starting with Picasso at the Arts Council Exhibition in 1960) yet it is only when one revisits it, because one seems to be doing something similar, that one begins to understand their work and its relevance to oneself. 

Picasso gets right to the core of my fascination: "I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them"

But to help their thinking each of these three have developed their own mechanisms. Picasso and the Cubists in order to understand form and interpret its existence on a flat surface felt it necessary to break into the form, separate its elements, penetrate beneath the surface. The appearance of an object taken from one point of view was manifestly insufficient. It should be conceived from all angles, the eye travelling over the picture finds itself above, behind and in front of the object at the same time. This movement, firstly in the consciousness of the artist is hopefully transferred to the beholder. The outcome is a new realisation of the totality of the object. In very similar ways Bellmer with his dolls and Hockney with his Polaroids do the same (I have frequently brought Hans Bellmer into my posts and more recently the work of Hockney. So click on 'older posts' to see my earlier contributions).

Continuing the Quartet strategy

 

 

 

 

You will see that each sheet contains the lines dividing into four quarters.  I start a drawing having selected a part of the pose which attracts and placing it in one of the quarters. Further parts are placed in the other quarters and parts start to overlap and morph together, eventually into a new whole. I have already introduced this approach in an earlier posting (see November 2nd 2018 'Quartets into my Cubism').

However, the third drawing differs from the others in that it is compiled from three separate quick poses.

Quartets plus

 

The discipline of the four quarters is added to by lines defining the parameters of other sub-divisions. This I feel has lots of potential as it introduces a flexibility as to what size of 'part' can be included, and one appropriate to the dimensions and shape of the part being introduced.

A Quartet of four quick poses

Two heads

 

I have become fascinated by the challenge of capturing a view and profile of the side of the head, with its high cheekbone, and partially seen nose, lips and eye lashes. I frequently include this when it appears before me.

In the next drawing the contrasting sunlight and shadow asked to be explored.

With added charcoal powder

 

On Thursday last at 'extreme poses' I took along my tub of charcoal powder which I had not used for years with an anticipation it might come in useful. So I used it, with my fingers.

So, Bob, you are an artist now. What do you paint?

This came up in a conversation the other day with a old friend who I hadn't met up with for quite some time. My response was that I didn't paint and that I didn't call myself an artist, and added that I did a bit of life-drawing on Thursday mornings and occasionally at other times. And No! I don't have a studio at home, but have a sketch/note book which is a kind of diary for drawing and note making. 

I recall in his Prelude to his wonderful book 'Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing' Frederick Franck writes 'When I hear someone proclaim: "I am an artist", something in me whispers, "That so?" But if they say: "I paint" or "I draw" or "I play the piano", I like to talk about painting, drawing, or playing the piano with them. Saying "I paint" may be a factual statement, but "artist" is an honorific. Proclaiming oneself to be an artist is all too pretentious. Art is neither a profession nor a hobby. Art is a Way of being'.  I have always said I just draw. So that's OK then.

However, just after I left my academic life, my 'business card' with its list of qualifications, and organisations I was a qualified to be a member of, etc., was no longer relevant to give to anyone to let them know of my address, telephone number, email, etc., so I signed up for one of these free 'business' cards, and on it stated a philosophical standpoint "Paths are made by walking" and my interests as, "beekeeper-woodsman-artist-thinker". 

Yes, I have bees, for forty years now; I have woodland which I sort of look after and cut trees for the wood burner, and I do a bit of coppicing and hedge-layng every so often; I think a lot, but then don't we all (this blog I hope is evidence that I think quite seriously about issues around my life-drawing and particularly the 'process' I am part of) . And, as you see, at the time, I called myself an artist. But now, I just draw!

However, my academic life and particularly the subjects of design methods, creativity, problem solving, and design processes, which were at the core of my teaching and research, have inevitably encouraged me to think about, to analyse, to question, to describe, to compare with others, to place myself in an historical context, to study past masters. And to attempt to put into words what is particular and peculiar to me when I draw. So my blog is my life-drawing diary now coming up to its ninth aniversary, and in scrolling back it is possible to see a pattern of vocabulary, which does change over time, is added to as something new emerges, but recently has begun to describe something I feel is specific to me and illucidates for me my art of drawing.

Whilst at the same time as agreeing with Frederick Franck about the pretentiousness of calling oneself an artist I am now going to be awesomely pretentious................

When I say "I draw" I am actually saying that "I am an ambidextrous kinetic spatial perceptionist in the fields of superimpositional, simultaneous, deconstructive, morphic anatomical cubism."  (Oh dear! Reads like a candidate for Pseuds Corner in Private Eye)

But don't take my word for it. As David Hockney said, "It is very good advice to believe only what an artist does, rather than what he says about his work"

What others see - 2

(this drawing is commented on in an earlier posting)

Paul Fowler sees a face looking into a space. He likes very much the side profile, the mark-making of the face, the apparent stare into the distance of the space framed by her right arm. For him this is 'the drawing'.

My response: 'I divided the paper into four and commenced drawing in each a part of the pose I found interesting, and then waited to see what emerged. I then followed up with a degree of merging the parts together in pursuit of my superimpositioning, morphism and cubism approach. This drawing is, as are all my drawings, an experimental exploration of my engagement with my life-drawing process. This is not a designed composition, and I do agree with Paul this is the best bit, and I believe one would not react in this way if the other parts had been cropped out. What do you think?

 

What others see - 1

(this drawing is commented on in an earlier posting)

Niel Bally: 'looks like a landscape'.

My response: I like very much Niel's observation. Quite pertinent. I rarely, very rarely include background or context. Occasionally the ropes might appear in a drawing at Paul Fowler's Extreme Poses in Stroud to help explain a particular anatomical distortion impacted as the flesh bulges from their supporting the weight of the body. Whilst I was pleased with the efforts I was making into exaggerating the advancing and distancing within the perspective I do recall my feeling that Katie was floating rather sinking comfortably into the cushions and blankets. So a few lines indicating folds went in, and deliberately these were straight to help emphasise the organic lines of the body. As soon as Niel talked of landscape, and as we sat side by side looking up across this 'internal' landscape, I immediately recalled a powerful image of a drawing by Van Gogh, a print of which hung in the corridor of my school so one I passed daily for over five years and often stopped to study. I loved the feeling of distance, and the way the closer elements advanced towards me with their heavier line. There is a hayrick and buildings helping the eye move across the fields into the depths of the paper. Perhaps Niel went further and saw a range of hills heaving off towards the horizon with flood plains and valleys surrounding. Now, having placed side by side these two images I am very taken with Van Gogh's positioning of the two wheeled waggon parked centrally in his composition. Perhaps a further link with my drawing.

 

Quartets into my Cubism

When you look at a model do you see 'all' at the same time? I suggest the answer is NO. Your eye moves around. You focus on different parts and on fragments. Also you probably look at the context, i.e. the support and the background, but again not all of it at the same 'instantaneous' time. Hockney has explored this idea by taking lots of poloroids of a subject then displaying in a grid but separating each photograph. He also plays around by superimposing and overlapping the images. This is essentially exploring a cubist approach. This engages with the issue of 'simultaneity' whereby several positions in space captured at successive time intervals can be depicted within the bounds of a single work of art.
I have talked previously about my own cubist approach but recently have begun to try and analyse exactly what is happening 'perceptually' when I enter my cubist process. Also I have tended to start a drawing with that part of the pose which most attracts or I find most interesting or appears to be something special.
Today I consciously brought the above ideas together by dividing the paper into four, or as I called them 'quartets'. In doing this I anticipated it might provide a meaningfully new way of bringing my selected parts together.
So each drawing starts off with the intention of me selecting a part which attracts or gains my attention for one reason or another, outlining it in one of the quarters, then proceeding to select other parts for the other quarters. Inevitably, the parts started to overlap, and merge into one another, and my morphism came into play. In the last drawing I became totally preoccupied with only two parts. So, this is not a strict strategy for exploring the model and the pose before me, but I do feel the approach has intensified my perceptual dialogue.

A significant conversation

The conversation was between myself and Niel Bally in his studio over in Talgarth during the making of this drawing of Katie posing very relaxed with her left foot less than one metre away as I sat at my easel. So I was looking directly along her left leg with her upper body beyond. I mentioned to Niel something of the challenges this pose was beginning to raise. The advancing foot perhaps exaggerating its size, the perspective of the upper body and my feeling that I should reduce it in size, my feeling that I was looking down on the left leg from an aerial viewpoint, etc. etc. 

What emerged during our conversation was the realisation on my part that one can be looking at a model in many different ways without changing ones position. On many occasions in the past I have moved my easel around the model in order to record my cubism, but here it was happening from my one standpoint. Yet my spatial perceptualism was most active. For many this may be obvious, and it is how others understand how we perceive objects. But for me I believe this to be a breakthrough moment.

What I am trying to come to terms with is that I have made a fairly conventional drawing of a model lying on a blanket and some rugs, and it is a long way away from my deconstructive superimpositioning morphism. Or is it?

Articulated compilations

I am using the term 'articulated' to convey that both these drawings result from a fairly conscious approach which I decided upon once I sat for a few moments looking at the pose and developed in my mind a clearly articulated concept to tackle. Bringing together the two halves would compile something different.

The model was seated facing me in a conventional symmetrical pose which I found uninspiring. So I decided to simply swop over the two sides of her body. It turned out to be a very confusing thing to do, particularly I kept mixing up the knees. I would supposed to be drawing the right knee but found myself exploring the shapes of the left knee.

I recall that in George Hardie's blog 'Drawing - My process' he quotes Fred Baier "drawing is a way of looking at something for longer than you would have thought possible". I believe that over the years my departure from drawing the conventional sitting, lying or standing pose in a representational way requires me to look and therefore see differently, and I may be spending more time looking than actually making marks.

 

Now here I had a conventional pose. Katie is lying on her side facing me. It was a most beautiful pose. So beautiful in fact that I just had to respond to its wholeness. But to capture the full length I turned to a landscape format and of course even on my A1 paper the figure was quite reduced from my usual large anatomical studies. Using fine-liner pens I quickly seemed to get the proportions correct and she looked good.

Now I don't know where the next step came from. Except that I had a burning desire to focus in on the parts which seemed to come to my attention for one reason or another.  My approach described in 'Quartets into my Cubism' was a week away. But I found myself focusing on and enlarging the face, the breast, the hand and the groin area. I found myself drawing vertical lines to help define spatial parameters for each part. The drawing of each part was superimposed over the relevant part of the whole pose. To distinguish between the two scales of drawings I then used graphite pencil, with some tinted charcoal and cross hatching tonal work. I thought it appropriate to not include an enlargement in the one panel so enabling the eye of the beholder to engage with the whole body drawing prior to deciphering my process.

I think it appropriate to include this approach as part of my cubism. I'll do this for now, and see whether I attempt anything similar in the coming weeks.

The muse on the move

As before, Katie is lying on her back but this time her left knee is raised with her foot under the calf of her right leg. I just went for this amazing anatomical sculpture. Then after a while her left leg became painful and she just had to straighten it. As it remained in this position I explored it in my drawing. So rather than me moving parts around here Katie did it for me. I love it!

 

This drawing is on A1 220gsm cartridge paper using graphite pencils with tonal treatment by light application of willow charcoal rubbed with the finger. I tend to use a 2B in each hand for lightly exploring the general forms followed with 4B or so for lines which are decided upon and the giving emphasis with a 7B in my right hand. 

Some 'thoughtful' responses

Someone said that 'the mind directs the optical exploration of the world' to which I would add that 'the drawing helps one to see the world that one is looking at'.

These are three fairly quick drawings, of short poses, all of which received very little conscious planning, if any at all.

1. A most beautiful form. A suggestion only of head and feet, so no distraction from the space within.

 

2. I tend to morph naturally these days. And its a sort of cubism looking at front and back at the same time.

 

3. How much does one bring forward, enlarge and exaggerate the head, in order to engage with the perspective? I guess that is what my mind dealt with here. Yet handling perspective should be second nature to me as an architect. But I do believe I experience perspective differently with life-drawing.

 

Postscript: I say above that these are three fairly quick drawings. By quick I mean they emerged quite spontaneously with very little, if any, what one might call pre-thought or planning. As soon as the model took up her position I took in the essence of the pose, perhaps focussing on a part or parts which caught my eye and started to respond with movement of my arms and hands with a graphite pencil in each. Mark-making moved from initial form to more definite line. And within a short time the model relaxed and took up her next pose. There is no recollection of pausing, standing back, reflecting on marks made, questioning what to do next. It just happened.

I recall Pollock: "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I am doing", and I have for many years been aware of my life-drawing process being meditative, and therefore for me therapeutic. I have talked of this on my blog before. Yesterday I was discussing this issue with a stone carver who said that when she is working her stone she becomes fully immersed in the act and all else is excluded from her mind. So the question arises 'What is one experiencing?' 'How is the mind working with the act of looking, and more specifically with the processes of seeing?'

Frederick Franck tells us that "I have learned that what I have not drawn I have not really seen, and that, when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realise how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle". This is how we all feel about the human body, the nude, anatomy. Franck's fundamental thesis is that 'drawing helps us see', and for me I see the drawing, i.e. the marks on the paper, as a physical manifestation of the dialogue between my mind and the muse. And for much of the time this dialogue is taking place beyond and out of the reach of any conscious control. It is magic. I have described elsewhere that for me, as a result of this phenomena, the process of art is emotionally charging and spiritual.

By a wonderful coincidence, yesterday, over breakfast, I was reading Frederic Jameson's review of 'My Struggle: Book 6. The End' by Karl Ove Knausgaard, in The London Review of Books (Vol 40, Nos 21, Nov 8 2018) in which he refers to Karl Ove's ideas about life and death, about human relations and political relations, about art, about books and writers, etc. etc. and quotes the following:

"What does it mean to see? With the Impressionists, the question is: what does it mean to experience seeing? One doesn't have to think too hard to understand ...……… the reason that painters and sculptors spent all their time during their crucial formative years of youth copying others or mechanically reproducing models of objects. They weren't doing it so they could copy reality ...…… They were doing it so as to learn how not to think. This is the most interesting thing of all in art and literature, and hardly anyone can do it or even realise it is the case".

Of course, they were also doing it to learn from the great masters before developing their own way. However, the essential point I take from this idea is that when I am within the act of life-drawing then I have entered a world of my own and I am not conscious of my thoughts. That which appears on my paper comes from within me, deep and emotional and spiritual and intuitive, and so I believe I can truly say that (and perhaps it is only on occasions) I am experiencing how not to think consciously.