A 3-day dialogue with Annie in Talgarth

 

I'm over in Talgarth in Powys at Niel Bally's studio for three days with Annie our model and a group of half a dozen regulars with one or two additional new members.

My absence from life-drawing due to my leukaemia and Covid appears to have resulted in an eclectic output as it will appear to the reader that I jumped from one familiar response to another. So, nothing new to present. I have come to expect that during each life session I will make an evolutionary jump the nature of which usually turns out to be an unanticipated surprise. My only explanation that this did not take place this time was that my recent activity of returning to past 'fine-liner pen' drawings and working on them with colour to unravel their content had resulted in a set of quite radical images and the emergence in my life-drawing journey of a new genre (this work has been the subject of recent past postings). Is it the case that I had exhausted my creative endeavour and it was now nigh impossible to pick myself up and move forward again OR was I myself exhausted from the impact of my leukaemia treatment (these 3 days were bang in the middle of my latest set of chemotherapy injections, and my reactions this time were most unpleasant).

So, we've been here before..............

Firstly with a direct follow up to my recent working of earlier drawings..........

Secondly, a few lines from a number of very short moving poses.........

Thirdly, a ten minute response using charcoal and fine-liner pen. I recall I had no hesitation in how to respond to this pose. It was so beautiful and I'd seen it before and mark-making took no thinking about.........

Fourthly, a carefully considered response to how I might morph the parts of the pose which fascinated me............

Fifthly, selected parts from a number of quick poses using a fine-liner pen in each hand..........

Sixth, and the starting point is dividing the paper into four and resulting in a compilation in which I set up a relationship between parts of four different short poses. Each is aiming to be a simple geometric formation within its own rectangle, yet they move together to some extent........

Seventh, a single response following the above exercise............

Eighth, another carefully considered morphing of selected parts which are moved together.........

Ninth, the above repeated with a very much quicker drawing technique............

Tenth, in which I started with the foot and within the foot I started with the big toe. The shoulder, breast and supported lower arm were then explored. I knew all along I wanted to include this rear view, but to what scale and how may it relate to the already entered parts of the pose? My two-handed fine-liner pen initial drawings then contrasted with the use of charcoal which I caressed around the paper with my fingers to realise the sensual form before me..............

Eleventh, and back to my recent exercises.............

Twelve, and at last a more conventional response for which I spent some time exploring the correct proportions and perspective rules of the pose............

Thirteen, and finally a very speedy response using 2B, 4B and 8B graphite pencils..........

Guess who I just met?

 In April this year I was on a visit to Roman architecture and archaeology on sites in Tunisia, Algeria and Sardinia and ended up in the south of Spain, and eventually in Malaga. After visiting its amazing cathedral and Roman theatre I came across this guy sitting on a bench with his sketch book. I asked if I could join him and when he saw I had my sketch book with me he said "I will show you mine, if you show me yours". I did and we had a lovely conversation. It was so good to meet a fellow Cubist. It turned out he was born in Malaga but left about the age of ten, and was returning for a visit to meet up with some old friends. He now has a new one!

Revisiting Talgarth

 I shall be heading over to Talgarth on May 18/19/20 to spend three days at Niel Bally's studio and in preparation for this I thought I would bring together the drawings I have revisited which were originally fine-liner pen drawings produced at Niel's in either May 2023 or February 2024. 

Through my eyes, and other's eyes.

Re-visiting my drawings.

Unable to attend regular life-drawing sessions I have re-entered my process as recorded in this blog, and whilst focussing on selected drawings, I have also re-engaged with my writings at the time of the drawings.

When I say I have 're-entered my process' I have selected drawings which for one reason or another appeal to me and perhaps more specifically are touching on the surreal or abstract. An additional criterion is that it is not obvious to me what the original pose was. So I am presenting to myself a set of drawings which have a degree of mystery about them. The question then arises how to unravel the mystery and discover what it is I have drawn. 

All the drawings are two-handed fine-liner pen drawings with a few using two graphite pencils. As the basis of my approach in constructing a drawing is to use overlap, superimposition and transparency thereby enhancing a three-dimensional spatiality to the composition, I have decided to utilise a transparent medium in my analytical process. Water colour was my first thought. But I rejected this medium as it would require a lengthy process to incorporate a drying out period to allow one application to be placed upon another. As I was very familiar with pastels, and I had some at hand, it was pastels I chose. 

Taking a drawing, I studied it, and worked out what the basic physical parts of each pose had been included. Some drawings were compilations of quick responses to perhaps three or four quick poses. I then started to apply colour to one of the parts, then the next, and so on. I simply used what colours I had at my disposal and did not employ any colour theory or criteria. However after I had worked on a number of drawings a set of rules did arise and certain colours were allocated to certain body parts. The technique I developed was to first caress the paper with the side of the pastel stick then to blend it across and into the paper with thumb or finger. A delicacy of pressure ensured that colours when applied over each other still retained their identity and therefor a high degree of transparency, and so maintaining and enhancing the fundamental spatiality to the composition.

It soon became obvious to me that I was generating a new form, even a different genre, and one far removed from the original pose, and from my response to the original pose. This I found very exciting and I was encouraged to continue.

Here are two drawings which I have now worked on which are originally from my pre-cancer days in April 2023. From what I now know I was extremely ill at the time and I was being treated for a virus the symptoms of which we now know were the early stages of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.

Here is the posting of April 17th 2023, with the original drawings, in which I am claiming something special is taking place:

I'm touching on something special here...........

 

 

And here is the posting of April 4th, in which I collected together a series of quotes which I felt resonated with how I analysed my own art at the time.

My art through other's eyes.......

Past posts record my attempts to invent my own descriptive vocabulary of my art of life-drawing. However, I have always been fascinated in the ways that artists provide insights into their own work through their writings. Drawings and paintings capture a moment in time but a related literature is often essential to understand the context, and to explain the approach, the process and the realisation of a work. So a recent exploration of quotes by those artists who I feel an association with has provided me with a different set of descriptive insights into my own approach, my own process and that which appears as my drawings.

I have to start at the beginning. Very early on I discovered that Hans Bellmer described what I had been doing for some time: "The body is like a sentence that invites us to re-arrange it, so that its real meaning becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams."

A slightly different wording from 1936, which I prefer: "The body is comparable to a sentence that invites you to disarticulate it, for the purpose of recombining its actual contents through a series of endless anagrams." I like the concepts of 'disarticulating' (i.e. focussing on and separating from) and then 'recombining' (i.e. relating and juxtaposing as one sees it). 

So, what is the outcome of my search through numerous quotes? I grouped them under four headings: MIND, PERCEPTION, PROCESS and EVIDENCE.

MIND

"I never knew what I was doing until it was done" Man Ray

"When I am working (drawing) I am not conscious of what I am putting on the paper" Picasso

"The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer" Matisse

PERCEPTION

"Knowing how to look is a way of inventing" Dali

"Nothing is confused except the mind" Magritte

"Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see (but it is impossible)" Magritte

"To know what you are going to draw, you have to begin drawing" Picasso

"I draw what I think, not what I see" Picasso

"Why assume that to look is to see" Picasso

PROCESS

"When I make a drawing.........the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way into the dark" Giacometti

"The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker that has the last word" Duchamp

"Destruction is also creation" Duchamp

"If you know what you are going to do, what's the good in doing it?" Picasso

"Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself. This leads to sterility" Picasso

"He who thinks he can............." Picasso

"There's nothing more difficult than a line" Picasso

"Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out" Matisse

EVIDENCE

"The form is always the measure of the obsession" Giacometti

"Once the drawing has been constructed, I have a tendency to rediscover in it, transformed and displaced, images, impressions, facts which have deeply moved me (often without knowing it)" Giacometti

"A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows" Magritte

Here is the posting of April 17th 2023:

A further look through other's eyes

Following my April 8th posting 'My art through other's eyes' and publication of my most recent drawings this review has appeared. This sentence is how I introduced myself as someone who is attempting to stand outside themself and look in, and describe what it is they are seeing. This corresponds very much with the process I have been going through as I return to each drawing and attempt to understand what I did, and how I did it, at the time.

The ambidextral perceptual cognitive and motor art of '2pencilbob': the fullness of the life-drawing 'process artist'

"He deconstructs and fuses anatomical parts in a manner that resembles a mystifying puzzle and the human body is transformed into a fresh compilation and given a new meaning. To the beholder his images create a reflection between body and mind. The gaze of the viewer is deconstructed giving them no chance to see the whole body thereby turning the act of looking into an act of assembling. His activity of dissecting the body into visual fragments transforms one's perception of the ordinary. This process of disarticulation disrupts the logic in order to find a more profound meaning. Going beyond traditional, classical and literal representations of the body to depict the surreal and abstract qualities of our subjectivity he is able to extract a deeper emotional response, and the transfer of fragments of reality into a new setting stimulates our imagination and subconscious. Through the metamorphic transformation of one object into another he finds a new potential inherent in the nude and in its ability to gradually become something else. The energy paths of a subtle unspoken communicative dialogue in a shared process between the two participants is, fundamental to the holistic spatiality of this all-embracing kinetic interactive phenomena."                                                

     HB/RM/MD/SD/PP: Autobiographical Surreal Art Review Weekly: April 15th 2023

The posting which now precede this one, present the 30 drawings I have so far re-engaged with. It is my intention, after a short vacation, to continue this work.

Nos: 30 to 36.

 

 30

 31

 32

 33

34

 35

 36

Nos: 26, 27, 28, 29.

 

 26

 27

 28

 29

Nos: 23, 24, 25.

 23

 24

 25