An Abstract reponse to Wren

 We are at Andrew's virtual life-drawing session with Wren as our amazing model.

We have 3 five minute poses and then the rest of the session will be taken up with a lovely long pose of about one hour and ten minutes. I am looking forward so much to this longer pose.

These are the 3 five minute poses.

I will make no comment on the rest of my drawings tonight, except to say that I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome!

I feel there is a 'abstract' quality emerging about them which I am particularly interested in.

In many of the drawings I can see a diversity, and a variety, in my-mark making which pleases me greatly. 

Not even a 'virtual' red haired lady.

 Just another doodle from my note-book whilst I fill in time. She is again from 'Model Society'. 

Beyond the virtual

 So this is not even a virtual-drawing session with a live model, so to fill the space here I am exploring 'Model Society' and mark-making in my A5 note -book:

It keeps me thinking! and drawing.

I guess that what I am doing here with these doodles, in my A5 note book, is connecting with other ways of responding to poses, but essentially it is just me simulating an engagement with the act of life-drawing. It helps to keep the mind ticking over and it does connect with some of the key issues. 

More of Fra (virtually)

Continuing with Monday night's virtual life-drawing, and I have my computer linked to my tv screen alongside which I have my easel with A1 cartridge paper to draw on. Fra is again our model doing some attractive yet fairly conventional poses but with a variety of timings. In order of posting these are:

2 x 2.5 minutes (both combined in one drawing)

2 x 5 minutes (ditto)

1 x 25 minutes

1 x 45 minutes

All are drawn with my dominant hand using my big thick stick of willow charcoal.

John Berger

 I keep returning to John Berger. 

Originally I recall it was his book 'Ways of Seeing'. Then I kept coming across him in tv programs. The Channel 4 lunchtime life drawing with nude models many years ago included him. I did that at home and my drawings are included in this blog.

I am re-engaging with John Berger at this time because I have just come across a paper of his from 1976 "Drawn to that Moment".

It is extraordinary in its insights into the emotions and concepts of drawing a human figure, which I believe can be transferred to any situation. BUT in his case it is John sitting at his father's body lying in a coffin. He draws his father. And he relates his feelings, his thoughts, and his insights into the relationship between an artist and the human body.

I have been moved, I have been energised, I have been uplifted, I have been taken into the depths of life-drawing (which is quite extraordinary as John is seeing, looking at, relating to, drawing, a dead body). 

At one point he touches on an aspect of life-drawing which I have engaged with a number of times in this blog: it is about how a drawing can tell the story of how it was made. John says, 

"Even a third rate drawing reveals the process of its creation"

He also refers to the perceptual mechanisms taking place and how what appears on the paper is a product of the perceptual processes of the artist, 

" A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree-being-looked-at".  

I recall that in a very recent posting I have talked of how a drawing says more about the artist and the perceptual world of the artist; of what the artist is actually seeing, or perceiving; of the mind of the artist; than any attempt to produce a realistic representation of the pose of the muse on the paper.

This goes a long way to validating a basic approach of mine, which is that I have little interest in the final drawing. OK: I want it to be acceptable to any beholder. But my attention, my consciousness, my application, my devotion, is to the process of me engaging with a model, sensing a dialogue between the model and the artist, a kind of two-way energy flow, the outcome of which (for me) is a move, a step, along my evolutionary life-drawing path. 

line drawing with graphite

 Just found two postings which resonate with me. They are about line-drawing and the use of graphite.

www.drawingowu.wordpress.com/2017/09/09/line-drawings/

and 

www.drawingowu.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/graphite-drawings/

Hope you find them useful.

I have been accessing this website for many years and found it both informative, stimulating and helpful.

The phenomenology of life-drawing

 I've concluded that virtual life-drawing is no substitute for the real thing. So much is absent, however much one works to make connections and to simulate the intimacy of dialogue between artist and muse and between fellow participants. 

In the virtual session we can see the other participants on the gallery, we can sit in front of the model and project the muse on to our big tv screen and get up close, we can post our drawings on to Cluster and make supportive comments to each other. Amazing really! But what is absent?

The full structure of the experience is diminished. I have often talked of the dialogue between artist and muse. Both are contributors to the process. Can you imagine one without the other? 

So what is 'The Experience' that I am missing, or better described as a dilution? 

from my point of view I am finding a diminuation in the following : perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and also the social activity inherent in the occasion including a linguistic activity. Each of these is being challenged. 

There is a level of consciousness which is challenged and diminished in the virtual state. The components of this are: 

        the appearance of things

                  things as they appear in our experience

                  the ways we experience things

                  the meaning things have in our experience

There is the artist. There is the muse. In the best situations there is dialogue. Each contributes. Each is aware of the part they are playing, and their contribution. Dialogue emerges and develops with time. I have experienced fulfilling life-drawing relationships with one or two special models who I have had the joy of drawing over the years. The understanding they have of their contribution to the process has been, to me, an amazing revelation. So much so that we, together, have agreed and celebrated this shared and contributive experience.

Neither the muse or the artist is necessarily explicitly conscious of our habitual patterns of action in this process, yet we each contribute, and without this joint presence art is not possible.

However, more than just the experience, it is 'the meaning' of the experience [I will be attempting to explore this at a later time].

       

Prior to later this evening..........

 Just set up my easel, etc., in preparation for tonight's virtual life-draw. Earlier today I read through most of my 2018 postings starting with drawings of Zoe in the December and then going back over the months. I find it a great reward and a stimulus to engage with my thoughts at the time. I now have quite a lengthy record. I came out of reading these with the feeling that 2018 was an extraordinary year for me. My superimposing, my transparency, my cubism, my spatial complexity, were all in full and experimental flow, and my writing about my thinking, my perceptual  processes, and my relating to movements and artists was very full. Pre-constructions of spatial geometries on the surface of my A1's was started and developed and generated fascinating compositions and anatomical juxtapositioning. So lets see what effect this all has on tonight.

Nothing like I expected!

This simply confirms that life-drawing cannot be planned. Which I have always claimed. But that does not stop me attempting consciously designed ways forward. 

From frustration to joy in 24 hours, with Fra.

That previous posting (Wren on November 2nd) was primed with frustration and uncertainty, but suggested ways of uplifting myself.

Then last evening two things helped. Firstly Fra came on to my screen and her poses and attitude inspired me back into my art. Secondly I resisted picking up my comfort zone fine-liner pens and graphite pencils and took hold of my big chunky stick of willow charcoal. I have just one of these so one of the hands of 2pencilbob took the evening off. And low and behold it seemed to allow me to take out my frustrations as I was able to power into the paper, but also stroke it lightly over the surface as appropriate.

Fra presented a variety of poses: 1 x 5minutes, 1 x 5minutes moving, 2 x 15minutes, and 1 x 45minutes. So here they are:

This is the outcome of the moving pose as Fra flies around inside my paper.

I had intended to juxtapose a half of the second 15 minute pose alongside to see what emerged. But when I saw what I had created I declined the challenge as I was rather pleased with the way my eye was drawn into the journey up and down the right side of the pose.

 

I frequently enjoy employing different scales, yet I do not think I do this consciously.

The longer final pose of the evening. One of my quite usual de-constructive/re-constructive processes came into play. I tend to start this type of response by firstly focusing on the part of the pose/anatomy which immediately attracts. Then when the second is started to be added 'compositional concepts' and 'narrative scenarios' emerge in my mind which are then developed as other parts are added. Transparency, superimposition, depth, spatial complexity, and a few other aspects play their part to varying degrees, but not sure of the determinants of these. 

The one preoccupation I consciously recall with this drawing was the four points of emphasis allowed by a heavy application of the chunky charcoal stick. Had some idea they would suggest/create/form/allow some sort of linking pattern or structure. But as soon as the concept arose the five minutes were up, so couldn't take it further.

Wren on November 2nd 2020: Not so much the drawings but my thinking surrounding them!

 Getting back to life-drawing after a bit of a break, with Andrew Buckle's Monday evening virtual session. Six drawings of various lengths of poses by a new model to me 'Wren'.

My last live session was with the lovely and inspiring Shelley, on March 12th, over at Paul Fowler's Thursday morning sessions 'Extreme Poses' in Stroud. Since then I have, on and off, tried Andrew's virtual sessions. They are hard work to concentrate on as the ambiance created in the live studio is absent. Having fellow artists as friends alongside and entering into their own worlds yet still connected is impossible to recreate or substitute. There is something very special about this shared but at the same time very personal context.

But a number of other changes have made it difficult to really get into my life-drawing world recently, and the creative and meditative aspects of its process. The range of concerns, restrictions and multiple changes with Covid-19, and the break-ins to our outhouses and loss of machinery and other goods, are the two principal events. But then my own self-imposed distraction as I have taken up the challenge presented by my Covid isolation of finally building a porch on to our self-built home which started four decades ago. But I miss so much my engagement with the human body, my making marks on my paper, my surprise and joy at what emerges as if by magic in front of me and what concepts, ideas, processes, and philosophies enter my thoughts and the research which follows as I attempt explanations of the content of my journey.

Not sure where I found this, but it has helped me push away my frustrations:

  'You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength". 

Over the past seven months, since live life-drawing stopped, I have become aware of an increasing emptiness, a general lack of self-confidence, and a reducing ability of power over my mind. I have filled my space with lots of physical activity including the building work, and also growing an amazing quantity of vegetables, amongst other things. But the intellectual, deeply personal, meditative, and challenging dimensions of the act of life-drawing has absented itself from my life. 

But I have already started to  consider how I might regain a power over my mind through my re-engagement with life-drawing. And what has come up is the question about how what emerges as I re-engage and that which has gone before. 

Followers of my blog will know that I regularly look back through my life-drawing history and carry out a sort of analysis of what has happened, looking for characteristics and trends and placing my art in a wider context often within art movements and relating it to significant artists. The questions that have arisen

 'Will something completely new and different come out or will I simply repeat that which I know I can do and which I know works?'

 'Will there be a reappearance of my iconological formula or schemata, i.e. will I cite, allude to, refer to, recollect or emulate that which has gone before? Can I avoid doing this? 

How may I avoid repetition? How can I avoid reverting to a former 'age' or 'era' of mine, or in Marxist terms an 'ideology'? Well, if an ideology is simply defined as a 'system of ideas' then I am completely relaxed by this. Because I know from a life-time of dealing with ideas then they will incorporate change. A thinking person does not stand still. And the content of this blog as a week by week diary over at least a decade is evidence of this. It shows that my art is a 'journey' and that I am a 'process' artist. Probably, when a disruptive challenge has entered ones life, it is perhaps necessary or even inevitable to delve back and to latch on to roots, before taking off again. So, lets wait and see what happens. 

Here are the six drawings of Wren posing for various poses. They are not posted in chronological order. One contains 5 one minute poses, and another is a forty minute pose. I will not indicate which is which. What is fairly obvious is that a continuation of some of my iconography can be detected in them: 'transparency', 'superimposition', 'spatial interpenetration', 'multi-faceted viewpoints', 'deconstruction and reconstruction', 'ambiguity', 'dismembered fragmentation', 'manipulation', 'distorted figuration', together with some 'exaggeration' and playing with 'differing scales'. 

I did come up with a fairly succinct summary of where I thought I had arrived, some weeks ago:

 'My Art has introduced an architectural spaciality into the 3-Dimensional multi-faceted viewpoints of Cubism'

Further thoughts around my current dilema to follow the drawings:

 

"In drawing, the moments of choice have been kept visible" John Berger. But the question I have asked is 'What has influenced the moment of choice in these drawings?! How strong has been the influence of my ideology? Pretty strong, Eh? 

But Richard Serra claims "There is no way to make a drawing - there is only drawing!" If this is so then one's ideology lies deep and influences unconsciously. Love it!

If a drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artists own needs, then it will inevitably express one's ideology however much one consciously attempts a jump towards something new or different. But Why Draw? I guess you can't draw for the sake of drawing. Just as you can't think for the sake of thinking, without MEANING being involved.  So the drawing will say so much about the author of the drawing- "Do a drawing every day. Become familiar with your voice on the paper" Grayson Perry. So, in your drawing you will begin to see yourself.

If one cannot release oneself from one's past then one must bring new youth to old ideas. And I feel this is what I have done a number of times over the years. Suggesting the existence of an ideology but also a presence of an evolution of process. Within an evolutionary process there is no place for 'end products', no place for 'achievement' (unless it is the achievement of continual change). Maria Clark talks of her art "I think my work as a process, so the question of achievement cannot be thought".

As an architect, when I enter the plane of the paper into it's space, I am transposing the three-dimensions of the body by disintegration, dispersion and reconnection into a two-dimensional format. This is my process. And perhaps my built-in, sub-conscious ideology sets some rules. But I will always recall Helen Frankenthala (a quote on the first page of one of my first notebooks) "There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen" and "Every canvas is a journey all its own".