Each part is decontextualised into a space of its own: then what happens?

I am a participant in the kinetic or kinaesthetic activity of life-drawing.

I stand, or sit at my easel, in front of an A1, white, portrait format, cartridge paper.

I see space within, around and beyond the surface of my paper.

I, the paper, the model, are within a spatial continuum.

A fine-liner pen, or a graphite pencil, or maybe some other medium, in each hand. I am a two handed artist. I am bimanual. I believe I employ bilateral co-ordination. 

Co-ordinated bilateral movements engage different sensing and motor areas in both hemispheres of the brain.

I try to carry out symmetrical movements but acknowledge my dominant hand plays a leading role.

Engaging the whole body - large swinging gestures that come from the shoulders, elbow or wrist, liberate creative expression, and also (so I am told) act in a restorative capacity to support healthy rhythms in the body and mind (great for my continued longevity).

To facilitate and enhance this process I am suggesting a spatial-perceptual strategy to employ in my life-drawing process. This involves introducing into the space of the paper a 3D geometrical framework. A series of focus areas in the form of lightly outlined circles, suggest focuses for engaging with those parts of a pose which are of interest/which fascinate.

How might this develop? In each circle: a different scale, a different perspective, a different part of the anatomy. This does not represent a change in my approach. In fact it seems to be formalising 'my cubisme' which I have talked about many times in postings over the past year or so.

Then, the whole pose could be superimposed across the drawing to celebrate the beauty of the whole, but also to give context to the decontectualised parts. 

It should be possible to see the initial circular constructs in these five drawings, and to see how they have helped focus my attention during the process of making the drawing. I have many times felt free to move away from the possible constraints of the circles. So I don't at all see this as a constrictive strategy.

Inspirational Clare again!

This morning over in Stroud at Extreme Poses I seemed to have been in a fully relaxed state. I  had no thoughts about how to approach the five 30 minute poses, and when Clare walked into the studio I became further uplifted. She is an inspirational model whose athleticism allows her to create challenges poses. This morning was no exception. And in the four outcome drawings I feel I can herald as embracing my current life-drawing pre-occupations. I'm not going to say anything more about these as I wish to get on to analysing my next set of drawings which I now know have moved me another evolutionary step in my journey. So let me engage with the concept that when I and the model meet there is a connection, and a strategy emerges to facilitate my engagement with her energies, and that my response is to focus on each part of the pose and to set up a procedure in which I de-contextualise each part and award each part a space of its own. 

When is the drawing of a nude, not a nude?

When it is an awesome spiritual experience!
And, it often is just this.
I've just had meaningful conversations with my philosopher/visionary friend, Andrew Brown, from Vancouver Island. AND this, coinciding with the return of Clare to Extreme Poses in Stroud.
Andrew and I talked around concepts and ideas about Unity, Truth, Goodness and Harmony, and Beauty. We discussed the triple human activities, those dominated by The Mind, The Will, and The Heart, i.e. the mental, the motive and the vital. My engagement in my process with the intellectual, with the volitional, and with the devotional.
Can you sense that I feel I'm on to something special.
How much did the role of Clare play in my new confidence, I am not sure. She is special! But I wasn't thinking this at the time.

Of the four drawings I believe one stands out. Which one do you think?

Yes! It's this last one.

Whilst there are some juxtapositions of selections, views, perspectives and parts which may challenge the beholder in the three other drawings I am proposing that the final drawings can be seen to continue a subtle yet significant pre-occupation with a particular spatial dexterity which has been emerging as a central theme within my perceptual processes in recent times. I intend to pursue this by bringing together examples of this and I will post them in due course.

'Chance favours the prepared mind'

Two days ago at Paul Fowler's 'Extreme Poses' and I'm drawing Andrew at an interesting time in my thinking about my life-drawing. The next few postings will reveal how I believe the 4th Dimension and the 6th Sense are coming into play, or rather should I say how I am beginning to understand, but only just beginning, the role these concepts play in perception and the process of one's art.

On a number of occasions I have claimed that a period of analysis and reflection (which takes place as I photograph and post my drawings and then write about them) often is followed by a discernible 'something new or different', a slight evolutionary change or development both in what appears on the paper and in the way I approach the next session. A kind of threshold has been set up which I am about to step over into a new world. I have also said that the term 'approach' does not imply coming up with a plan as to what I intend to do. Long ago I realised that plans don't work as there are so many variables to a life-drawing moment that can vary so much so that each session, and each pose, presents a new if not unique context to operate in. So no conscious plan, except going into a studio without a plan is, I suppose, a sort of plan.

What I am trying to say is that these days as I turn my attention to the pose before me I am consciously attempting to be relaxed, free in my mind, meditative, and divorced from worldly and personal issues. So much so that I am attempting to encourage and allow the message and the stimulation to come from the model and the pose. But going in the other direction are the sub-conscious deposits from my reflective self-analytical activity, some of which are quite near the surface and I am aware of them coming into play. But much of what influences my perceptual process at any one time are I believe hidden from me.

So if it is true that 'Chance Favours the Prepared Mind' which is from Jerry Uelsmann who creates amazing photomontage pieces, then my research, self-analysis, note-book and blog postings prepares my mind not only for change but unexpected change. I have claimed surprise at what appears on the paper before me. At one level this can be when I put on my spectacles and see clearly the nature and character of my mark-making, but much more significantly the gymnastics of spatial interpenetration, of overlapping superimpositions, of unexpected juxta-positioning of different anatomical parts, of the parallel existence of diverse viewpoints, of conflicting and different scales, of multi-perspectives allowing advancing feet and disappearing limbs, and the delight when ambiguity presents itself.

Many years ago I came across the photographic distorting experiments of the human body by Andre Kertesz. I very recently revisited his work and found parallels with some aspects of my life-drawing, via some writings of Professor Olvind Storm Bjerke of the University of Oslo. He talks of 'distortions of natural forms can create interesting abstract and confusing patterns that dissolve an object', of 'forms that undergo metamorphosis', that 'by detaching the body from the usual perception of it, the body is estranged and perception itself is thereby placed in focus'. He says that in Kertsz's photographs 'the body is transformed into an object we no longer have a firm grasp of. It escapes the kingdom of the gaze, it avoids us as a slippery bar of soap'. I guess that is one reason why we keep on with and consistently pursue the challenge of life-drawing. I have argued that the drawing is not all about the body, but about the disintegration of spatial perception to which one has become accustomed.

Shelley on October 31st

Extracts from the first three 30 minutes poses were superimposed in this drawing.

Here I am using lines from the straps to define spaces within which events from the pose are given an identity.

One of Shelly's amazing poses as she squashes her face into her hand, takes the weight down to her elbow resting on the thigh, and then her whole body supported by the plinth.
Why is the height of the pose concertinaed?
There could be a long explanation to this question, but here are a few quick thoughts which I believe come into play:
a) I rarely do the whole pose these days and love responding to the parts which attract.
b) I like to draw big and get into the detail. As a consequence the whole pose cannot be completed as it is on an A1 paper.
c) My experience is that selecting and compressing and the resultant morphing often helps to emphasis the essential message of the pose effectively, and in such a way or in a different way that a drawing of the whole pose would otherwise do.
d) I am very much dealing with how I am feeling about and perceiving the whole pose, the gesture, the idea within the pose. I believe I am steering clear, but not completely, of my cubist, deconstructive, analytical, interpenetrative and spatial attitudes, which occasionally I feel perhaps violate. Should I claim that in responding to a more coherent, and I would add a more conventional approach and format, I am celebrating the female body as the incarnation of harmonic and beautiful form.

My door of perception

I have entered thro' the door into my perception (or perhaps into a greater insight of my perceptual processes). So at this moment in my life-drawing journey I am saying that I see my life-drawing process as a 'perceptual activity'. 'Mark-making' is incidental yet significant.
I believe I am much more engaging with both the 4th Dimension and the 6th Sense than previously.
The drawings I have recently posted I claim are reference to this.
I have talked in previous postings of my engagement with the 4th Dimension and what I believe this to be: its about a fairly complex process of drawing with time and with space, and drawing in time and in space.

So what about the 6th Sense?

There are two very recent occasions which brought home to me the nature of the 6th Sense.

Firstly, whilst I was drawing Gemma in a lying pose with her head towards me and her body stretched out in a long perspective I was starting to recall drawing Kate in the same pose but two years previously. No conscious recollection or conscious comparison at the beginning. The connection and relationship between the two situations only gradually emerged. They took place in different venues. They were two years apart. I did not make any conscious connection. Yet, within me links were there. And many aspects of the two drawings are similar. I have posted them together and made a further comment on them. There is a strong personal connection and relationship between Gemma and Kate which no doubt played a part in the similarity of outcomes of the two drawings, influenced through the way I perceived the two people as one.

Secondly, it is with the model Natalie. She modelled around 9 to 10 years ago and I have many examples recorded on this blog from this period. Many expressive pieces mostly it appears in charcoal. She was amazing. And consequently her overall poses and the characteristics of the way she held her head, hands and feet, became embedded in my vocabulary. This enforcement of retained images was regularly strengthened as I scrolled through my blog for various reasons on many occasions. So imagine my surprise and absolute delight when the other day after setting up my easel and paper I turned to find her entering the studio in her robe. No news or any other indication it was to be her, so no 'mental' preparation or anticipatory thoughts. There she was. She climbed on to the plinth and into the ropes and what was I seeing? I had instant recall of those images, and what is more the pose she took up was in my mind right down to the dangling hand. So in the posting I recall an earlier drawing to relate to the present one.

The 6th Sense was fundamental to both these situations: i.e. the role of memory in influencing our perception, and this playing a part on that which appears on the paper.