Towards a new complexity

Just recently been talking about reaching towards a greater degree of complexity and intensity in my art. The three days at Niel Bally's studio started to reach this. So the question arises as to how this can be furthered in my Thursday morning five poses sessions at Paul Fowler's Extreme Poses over in Stroud. Evidence from this morning reveals it can. 

We had the amazing Tamaris to model for us. I first met with her many years ago as I was starting my two pen squiggle work. I know her, and we talked before she started to pose. She said "Oh, you are the guy who draws with both hands!. So off we went.

Just two drawings emerged from the morning of five poses. Poses 1 and 2 and 5 went on one, and poses 3 and 4 on the other.

So, here is the first drawing of two poses: breast, underarm and face were moved and played around with whilst the dangling hand went in twice at different scales. In the second pose her weight bearing down on the plinth and her upper body leaning away fitted well into the composition.

Here, the lower leg and the amazingly bent foot at first attracted me, and I spent some time exploring this. This took up most of the first 30 minutes. But I must have included something else. Unsure which. Most likely the bottom right to top left diagonal. My uncertainty is because I was so absorbed in my deep meditative sub-conscious process that any conscious recollection of sequence is unlikely. All I can recall is that I was anxious to include the two legs and bottom and her upper body as it leaned over to the left.

I am anticipating that as I return to this drawing I will see that it is heralding a new step in my evolutionary journey....................................I think it does!

From my sketch book: No Comment

 

Three days: my pre-thoughts, a quick reflection, and the drawings.

PRE-THOUGHTS:

Just got back from the third day over at Niel Bally's studio in Talgarth. I drove the 40 miles or so each day, to life-draw from 10.00am thro' to 4.00pm. Our model was Louise for all three days.  Seven of us attended, from London, Birkhampsted, Swansea, Bath and Hay-on-Wye. Most booking local accommodation or staying in Niel's place. Niel presents an attractive studio and facilitates a real sense of 'working together' and sharing, and enjoying the experience. 

I have been over to Niel's only about four times before so was well prepared for the very different structure to my usual Paul Fowler Thursday morning program of five 30 minute poses per session. Here is my recorded anticipatory notes from my notebook:

Forthcoming 3 days at Niel Bally's:

• longer poses (than the 30 minutes at Stroud)
• very different studio environment/ambiance
• question as to how I will maintain my approach within a tonalist/colourist/painting context?

What can I expect to do?

• more intense and complex drawings
• repeating a pose a number of times in the same drawing: and possibly at different scales
• attempting to do something new/different

BUT: I will maintain my set of variables/constraints/parameters, i.e. A1, portrait format, 2 pens, linear mark-making.

MY IMMEDIATE REFLECTION

I achieved my goal of producing fairly complex drawings. Up to ten 5 minute poses were juxtaposed against each other on one drawing, and much longer poses of up to one hour or more allowed me to experiment, in an unhurried way, with different approaches. The principal aim was to really explore the issues of superimposing a drawing of one part of a pose on top of another, and to reach complexity. Then to stand back and to see if a 'clarity' existed, or was 'confusion' the outcome? My feeling is that all this was successful. So, when I have photographed them I will post the outcome. And I will attempt to post them chronologically.

I mentioned above the context that I would expect to find myself in, i.e. 'tonalist/colourist/painting'. This was the case. Some amazingly highly skilled charcoal and painting work was on show. Everyone's paper was completely covered in eye catching dense productions, which when displayed on the walls contrasted with my line drawings on pure white cartridge paper. But I held my own, and received positive and complementary comments. Two-handed fine-liner pen drawings of superimposed overlapping parts of the human anatomy, drawn at different scales, and often in great detail, have arrived!

DRAWINGS

Day One:

We started with numerous 5 minute standing poses.

This is more like one of my 30 minute 'extreme poses' drawings. So I'm not even starting to attempt greater complexity, which I clearly stated as my principal aim before we started.

This is better. And I really do like the outcome. A sort of rolling hilly landscape.

The final drawing in the final half hour of Day One. Felt like a change from the earlier intensity of my fine-liner work. So charcoal and graphite pencil. I still managed to play around with what I was looking at: you will see that I have brought the legs down to meet and so overlap with the upper part of the body.

Day Two:

I moved my position during this drawing to get two different views of the pose.

Now I am beginning to get somewhere with my aim of achieving greater complexity in the composition. 

This is a compilation of a series of 5 and 10 minute poses.

Then for the last half hour of Day Two again a change, including two views of the same pose.

Day Three:

The lower arm, knees and breasts stack up and overlap.

My jury is still out on this one. Didn't feel I was getting anywhere with it. Just lines all over the place. I'll have to come back to this one.

Probably the most challenging and interesting of my approaches during the three days, in which I explore different scales and varying weights of line as I view the lying pose stretched out from left to right before me.

Then just as with the end of Days One & Two something different as I pick up graphite pencils to build upon an initial exploration in two-handed fine-liner pens. I recall that my intention was to place the whole length of the pose diagonally across the paper.

A huge thank you to Louise the model for her stimulating poses. 

A big thank you to Niel Bally for hosting and tutoring and for bringing together 7 outstanding artists and for facilitating beneficial and enjoyable conversations on our work. 

A big thank you to Su for her amazingly appetizing vegetarian lunches.

I'm on a high!

Preparing for the exhibition, and entering over the past few sessions a new kind of feeling about my art, I seem to have elevated myself on to a new and different plain. So going over to Stroud this morning I think I was expecting something special to occur. AND, I believe it did. Conversations with colleagues and with Paul Fowler in between poses and at the break confirmed that something of note was taking place in my art as evidenced by what we were all looking at in my drawings. 

The coincidence of having today Paul Boon as our model was a huge bonus when placed alongside my optimism. Currently, Paul Fowler is giving us two outstanding models. Shelley and Paul. I could write a lengthy essay on the quality attributes and contributions they each make. Amazingly different, but each very special.

So, here are my five drawings from this morning. Each is a response to a 30 minute pose. I get into a drawing very quickly. I start mark-making to explore a part of the pose as soon as I am attracted to that part. This is almost instant. Then I add other parts and gradually a compositional narrative emerges within my sub-conscious. As the 30 minute clock approaches I retreat back and attempt to take in that which has appeared on my paper, and I engage with and apply some concluding lines and points of emphasis.

Here are the five drawings in the order they were made:

The enquiry continues..........

 ................ into ways of describing my art. Not necessarily my art as it appears as drawings but my art as a process. Following the description in my previous posting, which I am really pleased with, I am very likely to move on and search for and create another set of descriptive phrases. As before these are likely to concentrate on my process. I have said a number of times over the years that I believe I am a process artist. In other words I enjoy thinking about and exploring and researching what takes place as I sit in front of my easel looking at the model, i.e. the complexities of the dialogue and interactions between me and the model, and how things begin to appear on my paper. I have no goal in the form of what I want my drawing to be. As I have said before I relish the sense of anticipation that builds up within me, when at the completion of the pose I stand back and see what has appeared. A dominant characteristic of my process is that I select parts of the pose and juxtapose them in a completely non-predetermined way. However, I am sure there are a set of rules and criteria which I have built up over time which guide the process. But these are mainly sub-conscious and I would have great difficulty in attempting to describe them. And any attempt to stand back from myself and see myself as an object is anathema to me. I want my inner workings to remain uncontaminated by any pseudo-scientific analysis. I just want to go with the flow each time. 

Here are my drawings from the five 30 minute poses by Shelley last Thursday March 10th. Ropes and plinths provide her with supports which she uses in different ways in each pose. She is about a metre and a bit away from me. I am seated so she is mostley above eye level. Where a foot is on a plinth this is usually straight ahead at my eye level. 

Where do I  start? Something grabs me: toes curling over the edge of the plinth; the curved profile of the line from shoulder down the back to the curve of the bottom; a breast pushed upwards as it rests on a thigh; a foot carrying the weight of the body, bent with tension. Then often a face profile, usually last to go in, and rarely if ever the whole face, eye lashes above a high pronounced cheek bone, nose peeping, a suggestion of lips, and then the chin. Each of these parts is explored, and seen, by drawing it. One after the other, overlapped, superimposed. The line drawing allows transparency.

Years ago when this process began to emerge I used the term 'collage' to describe what was happening. I have tended in my writings to avoid this term, and Paul Fowler is not happy with it either. I believe that in collage work the artist moves bits around against each other until a final composition is arrived at. Moved physically with the hands. If this is what happens then it does not describe my process. I believe if anything I am moving all the anatomical parts of the pose around within my mind and governed by my deep perceptual structures which provide the parameters for me to see and respond to what I am looking at. Sometimes my drawing of a part will be more abstract than realistic. And as you will know we rarely now see anything resembling photo-realism. So how about this latest of my definitions:

'I treat anatomical parts as abstract elements which I meticulously compose into challenging pictures'

So, at last, here is Shelley and I feel that in these responses I am riding high in illustrating my collage process.

Exhibition note: amended

 

Bob Fowles

 

“Remember, a line cannot exist alone; it always brings a companion along. No lines can go wild; every line must have its function”     Henri Matisse 1908

In my magical and totally captivating life-drawing process, a sequence of arrival of selected parts from a pose, over time, sees that each takes its place in space, indicating no chronology of choice and arrival, and suggesting no hierarchy of importance. In the way I juxtapose these parts, I provoke depth and perspective and create a spatiality which holds a degree of ambiguity and uncertainty. Through overlap, superimposition and transparency, in my multi-faceted re-scaled model, I embody a balance of form.

My two-handed drawing technique is the instrument of my kinetic action which enhances the perceptual and cognitive aspects of my approach. It is a whole mind-body engagement. On each occasion the model is the initiator of dialogue. A process then unfolds incorporating experimental mark-making and risk, from which the unexpected often emerges. Currently I work with a defined set of tools, i.e. A1, 220gsm white cartridge paper, portrait format, a fine-liner pen in each hand. This constant set of parameters avoids any distraction from seeing the model, and allows me a freedom to enter the depths of my intuitive, sub-conscious and meditative process.

Over sixteen years I have explored pencil, pastel and charcoal, have been a colourist and tonalist, moving from photo-realism to figurative expressionism. In recent years the line has become my vehicle. With a graphite pencil or a fine-liner pen in each hand I somehow, in my mind, deconstruct the pose before me whilst simultaneously bringing those parts of the anatomy which attract into a new but unanticipated composition.

I am a student of my own art and my commentary, self-analysis and reflections are recorded on my blog alongside postings of all my drawings, see: www.bobfowleslifedrawing1.blogspot.co.uk

Two mornings drawing Shelley

 February 24th and March 3rd.