Assignment 3

The brief calls for a drawing movements in response to a rhythmically complex piece of music. I chose Holst, The Planets and started on a A2 sheet of sugar paper using pastels.

The red and purple masks represent deeper, louder notes, the blue and yellow higher, quieter notes. This took considerably less than an hour to make but the shapes of the marks quickly became lost in the mass of lines. I do actually quite like it, it's bold and lively and not like anything I would normally draw.

In an attempt to draw for longer without creating a tangle of lines I changed to coloured pencils.

My photo is a bit out of focus but you get the drift. It's still a bit scribbly

So I drew over it with pastel, one on each hand in time to the music. I should have checked the colours better before I started, in the manner of pastel they were a bit grubby on the outside.

I closed my eyes and in homage to Rauschenberg I used a putty rubber in each hand to erase in time with the music. It smeared some of the pastel rather than removing it all.

Then added more pastel over the top which sort of works.

 I decided to just draw in response to Mars, The Bringer of War as the rhythm although still complex was more consistent.

For this drawing I closed my eyes throughout and was surprised how clumped together the marks were even though I thought I was using the whole page. I had hoped that I might repeat lines over each other but there is little evidence of it.

So to make it more interesting I closed my eyes again and used charcoal to the sounds of Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity which is a much more choppy rhythm.

I put everything to one side then reviewed the drawings a couple of days later. I can see a face in the second drawing, well several faces but this one is the one I chose to highlight.

I accentuated some of the lines around him, could he be posing or lifting? He does have a flat cap so he looks more like someone from Manchester or Jarrow rather than Mars or Jupiter

I used white pastel to highlight the swirling lines as though he has been blown in from a cartoon. Maybe more genie than greengrocer now.

Here it is with the photo tidied up a bit.

I think I preferred it with just the dark blue lines although the white does change the way that you read the drawing.

The aim of this brief is to explore the interplay between gesture and representation.

The OED says;
Gesture  "a movement of part of the body, especially a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning."
Representation "The description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way"

The marks represent my physical response to the music but the representation is very much a personal internal thing which is made public by the act of drawing it. I can only represent myself so although I may produce something that is visually appealing I don't think anyone else can share that feeling or identify what I was listening to from looking at my drawings. The technique has potential to generate new marks and ideas and set the mood for a picture. It forced me to work large and loosely and not be over reliant on likeness and making a "good" drawing.

Reflection Part 3

This part of the course really pushes the definition of drawing out from the norm. It lays down a challenge to step out of your comfort zone and abandon safe representational drawings. I enjoy the experimental aspects but it is hard to reconcile the work I have done here with my own self-generated work, I guess that the parallel project is where this should come together. I don’t think that someone looking at my coursework here would recognise it as mine so I have abandoned whatever could be considered my emerging personal voice in my experiments but I do think that this is a good thing. I have been working in the same way for too long and have created a net of what is acceptable and “good” which imprisons creativity I need to try different approaches to move forward.

For the final assignment I am still working too small but I am struggling to fit larger pieces of paper into my house to work freely on, I need more space. I looked at Tony Orrico and Heather Hansen after doing my final pieces which was a mistake as I think that they would have informed the work.

The drawing machines worked best for me. There is a lot of potential to produce different work and add to the drawings generated in that section. I am also reasonably pleased with the finished pieces for the final assignment. I am learning to keep working into unpromising drawings, because I consider them to have “failed” I am not too precious with them and I have found that they can only improve. Using very long implements to draw was challenging but does make lovely relaxed sweeping lines and counteracts my annoying tendency to scribble. I used this technique to make a drawing for my parallel project.

The blind drawings weren’t as successful, as finished pieces. I’m a very visual person and I find it hard when I have to use my other senses. Blind contour drawing is a skill that needs practice, that’s another thing I should add to my to do list. I do think that it’s a good technique to try to loosen up or deal with creative block and it does make me think differently about how I represent objects.