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!