Drawing machines

Find something which moves and attach a drawing medium to it so that it creates a drawing by itself. 

A felt tip attached to clockwork chattering teeth. I did start with charcoal which made more curving lines of short choppy marks but sadly they didn't show up well. The felt tip makes the same small lines but tends to just move forward.

Looking at some examples of other drawing machines. Using motors and robots. The DuoGraph which is a new more sophisticated take on the Spirograph from my childhood, and often more figurative work from Harvey Moon who has some interesting projects such as the drawing controlled by the cricket. I was inspired to try and construct my own machine. I tried deconstructing another clockwork toy but couldn't attach a pen to make a mark. I explored rubber bands and cardboard and spinning pens which didn't really work. Suspended pens did make a mark which curves nicely in between short lines and dots.

Hanging the paper seemed a good idea but the weight of the pen stopped both pen and board from moving independently. I filled a plastic bag with slightly diluted gouache and made a pin hole to use suspended instead of the pen but the paint fell in drops rather than a steam. I'm sure it's possible to fix but it could take a lot of time.

My first thought when I read the brief "You might use a remote control car, a clock face, a door which is opened regularly, the foot of a dancer." was to use the trace of an ice skaters blade on the ice.

It's hard to see what you're photographing as the light reflects off the ice which adds an element of uncertainty to the exercise. I took 6 photos of an area where I had been practicing spins. It's not very clear at first but with a bit of Photoshop intervention I think you can see what is happening.

Incidentally the reflection of light in the ice makes an interesting pattern when the photo is inverted.

Using the trace of my skate on the ice as the basis for my developed piece and started by printing the photo at A4 size and tracing the lines

Then I drew it again in multicoloured pencil 

Which is a bit dull so I tried some big sweeping drawings in pastel 

Then carefully copied the shape and added some coloured pencil

This has the feel of a Charles Rennie Mackintosh flower but I'm actually seeing big hats on a sunny day, Ladies Day at Ascot. Its not a design that is easy to repeat so instead of thumbnails I printed out some copies and tried colour using crayons.

They are a bit feint but I like the bottom version best, particularly the purple lines which feel like movement (this happened accidentally as I scribbled in colour).
I copied the design onto a larger sheet of sugar paper and added colour. It was, surprisingly, easier to make smooth pencil curves on a larger drawing.

The colours are a bit bright but I wanted the feel of well cared for green grass and extravagant hats on a sunny day, maybe I'm trying to be too specific and not letting my audience make up their own minds. I don't like the purple lines in this larger drawing. Everything else is smooth and the lined area looks unfinished.

Removing the lines makes the purple area look like a flat balloon but I think its the contrast with the white.

This is a little bit better but removing one area of white makes the other look odd and unbalances the picture.

Now its too pink and I've drawn the life out of it. The rough had more energy and potential so I strengthened the colour and used a little water to soften the green of the background.

At this point I told myself to stop and move onto the next task, but just one more version.....

White on a neutral background suits me well, but it needed some colour.

This time I resisted bright colours and went for green grass and sunshine yellow maybe inspired by John276778 who posted a photo of scattered yellow flowers on the Personal Voice thread in the Coffee Shop forum.

It's difficult to preserve the energy of the original lines once you start to draw them carefully and the temptation is to tidy the original. However it is nice to have the freedom to remove splodges and random lines that don't fit with my vision of the design. Having an automatically generated original to work from frees me to make something different to my normal style. I do prefer the lines that I drew myself because I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to my own artwork!

After I'd finished I found this video of drawing machines made by Fine Art students at Batley School of Art and Design which shows them successfully doing what I failed to achieve with my clockwork toys.

Research
Rebecca Horn Projects include Activation Real Time The machine creates a simple movement which is repeated inaccurately so that the marks overlay each other. It is complex because it is repeated many times but simple because the machine is unable to do more than a few types of movement so the marks are similar. The piece is better explained here I also managed to find this video of some of her machines. I don't think that I haven't found links to all her work although I checked all the libraries and galleries on the student website.

Her machines are artworks in their own right, clever interesting and thought provoking, but I don't see them as drawing machines apart from Activation Real Time or the machine that dips into the water towards the end of the second video. I guess the machines draw invisible lines through the air but surely to call them drawing machines complicates the description and takes attention away from what they do well which is to bridge the gap between humans and machines. I think she is exploring how a machine can be made to be vulnerable yet able to perform to an audience in a gallery. By doing this she is exploring how humans function.