drawing drawing generates thinking and vice versa

drawing …”drawing generates thinking and vice versa. ” Helmut Jahn(b. 1940, Architect)

To categorise and define drawing is to impoverish it. Drawing has always been serving as an intrinsic practice for all areas of visual arts. It has been the most universal mode of communication.

Some …. Definitions of drawing Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a twodimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax colour pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, various kinds of erasers, markers , styluses, and various metals (such as silverpoint or drypoint). “To make a mark or trace a single line upon a surface immediately transforms that surface , energizes its neutrality: the graphic imposition turns the actual flatness of the ground into virtual space , translates its material reality into fiction of the imagination. ", David Rosand, art critic

Drawing is defined as design in Renaissance by Giorgio Vasari(the first art historian)is the ‘parent’ of the three main arts: architecture, sculpture and painting. “Drawing is a work of the mind. Every drawing is the expression of a thought or a sentiment, and is charged to show us something superior to the apparent truth. ", Charles Blanc, “Drawing is the best way of developing intelligence and forming judgement , for one learns to see and seeing is knowledge. ", Eugene –Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

Art materials adverts as political consequences Is your pencil British? Koh I Noor advert , 1920’s British WW 2 pencils advert American WW 2 pencils advert Pencil drawings were between 1920 -1950’s well paid advertisements jobs. However the brands used often had a patriotic edge. Between the wars drawing was a very well established career: engineers , architects, commercial artists, etc. , all had to draw with pencils.

WW 2 PROPAGANDA ADVERTS FOR PENCILS Weapons of mass destruction? !? The best quality pencils in the world were considered to be Koh -I-Noor(made in Czechoslovakia). However , because of patriotic feelings the most used brands were British or American.

Secret Pencil Kits were manufactured in total secret and after normal working hours by the management of the pencil company. These secret pencil kits were supplied to the RAF pilots of WWII, when opened, snapped in half, they contained a miniature compass and silk maps of Germany. In 1942, Fred Tee, a manager at the Cumberland Pencil Company was contacted by British government official Charles Fraser-Smith to make special secret pencil kits for RAF pilots in case the pilots were shot down over enemy territory

1. OBSERVATIONAL DRAWING Leonardo da Vinci John Ruskin The correlation between the act of drawing and training the eye is a significant aspect of drawing which dominated art school teaching and remains a strong notion even today that drawing is irrefutable.

1. OBSERVATIONAL DRAWING Rembrandt , Three trees

“Everything that you see in the world around you , presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colours variously shaded. ” John Ruskin

Since the Renaissance , observational drawing has enjoyed a healthy relationship with science and empirical thinking. Leonardo's emphasis on observation and empirical science was not separate from his art. He believed a good artist should also be a good scientist because an artist cannot reproduce colour, texture, depth, and proportion accurately unless they are a careful and practiced observer of reality around them. Euan Uglow Leonardo da Vinci

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation. ' (William S. Burroughs) Cezanne The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution. (Paul Cezanne)

Euan Uglow

Strategies for constructing a coherent whole can be tried and tested, and progress over time is clearly visible, both within and between drawings. These qualities render drawing a valuable resource for reflection on learning and for approaching analogous processes. It can be seen as a broad base for analogical reasoning. Throughout an observational drawing there’s an initial distinction between the simultaneity of sight of an object and the multiple evidence of many glances. As the process progresses this distinction disappears and the assembled moments made evident on the surface constitute a totality and eventually a drawing.

Drawing process can also be considered analogous to the creative process in a number of ways: • Both begin from a single point, be it given or chosen. • Both involve cycles of construction and destruction. • Focus must shift between smaller elements and the whole to maintain coherence (stepping back and leaning in during making). • Both involve aesthetic decisions and compositional planning. • A range of strategies can be chosen, e. g. beginning from a specific point and working outwards, or working from the general into the specific. • It might be necessary at some point to erase large portions and re-draft. For example, if an error is found, if a preferable compositional choice is found or if the purpose of the drawing changes. Michelangelo Jim Dine Frank Auerbach

The process of adding is equally important as the process of extracting. They both contribute to the history of the drawing. This is the essential difference between a photographic image and a drawn one. Willem de Kooning’s erased drawing by Robert Rauschenberg

In an era of advanced technological progress is observational drawing still important? ‘I think it’s a basis for seeing, you see more of the world if you draw. ’, art student The most important aspect of drawing for many of the artists was the use of drawing to develop more sophisticated ways of perceiving the external environment. The act of observational drawing elicits a form of heightened perception, that forces the draftsman to look in a more focused and persistent manner at specific elements of the visual environment.

Drawing vs. Photography William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 - 1877) In early Modernism, photography was not a medium set to replace drawing and painting. It was a medium which offered a technological alternative. It could be said that artists were drawing with the camera. The intellectual process of choosing and composing an image was the same.

Henri Cartier Bresson (19082004) For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression. Henri Cartier Bresson

Henri Cartier Bresson Towards the end of his life and career Cartier Bresson gave up photography and concentrated on observational drawing.

Joachin Schmid “professional looker” Using other people’s (often mundane) photographs, he creates artwork that is alluring, intriguing, and captivating. He revels in photographs that other people lose or throw away in public.

2. Drawing as bricolage In the visual arts bricolage is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work created by such a process. The term is borrowed from the French word bricolage “The signified changes into the signifying and vice versa. ” “The bricoleur speaks not only with things …. but also through the medium of things: giving an account of his personality and life by the choices he makes between the limited possibilities. ”, Claude Levi-Strauss http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Cuz. KGg. Jx 0 j. I http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=_Qrd. Ys. Ay 9 WA http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=X 95 etn. Ap. DS 8 JL Griffiths, drawing machine

Drawing as bricolage-recorded process Lucebert (Lubertus van Swaanswijk) De Kooning , Woman , 1951 One scribble suggests another , one means of drawing has demanded another, nothing is hidden, one medium suggested another. The process results in the product and this is the only concept.

Drawing as speculative and investigative Duchamp suggested how dimensions can be generated: a point moving through space produces a line ; a line moving through space produces a plane; a plane moving through space produces a solid. What happens when a solid is moving through space? In a 3 d world this can’t be physically envisaged. However it can be imagined. Thomas Malton Richard Talbot http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=wc. R-WMu. C 7 Zo&feature=BFa&list=PL 523 C 14 AF 798 F 0402

Drawing as design investigating method The design process takes place on the paper and the design is largely part of the drawing method-thinking and locating points and forms within the confines of a rectangular block. Michelangelo-Piazza dei Conservatori Ucello-chalice design

Drawing as design investigating method Richard Serra Sol Lewitt The drawing is a space where the individual thinks. The drawing does not have to make sense to anyone else apart from the person drawing. It is a problem solving method.

Drawing as design investigating method Issey Miyake-fashion designer From the outset, Miyake’s creative process has been based upon the concept of “one piece of cloth. ” His process explores the fundamental relationship between the body, the cloth that covers it, and the space and room that is created between these elements. “Even when I work with computers, with high technology, I always try to put in the touch of the hand. ” Issey Miyake Yohji Yamamoto-fashion designer Employs a wide range of influences, manipulations and drawing mediums. “To be modern is to tear the soul out of every thing”, Yohji Yamamoto

Drawing as a recording activity of events-source of inspiration Dieter Roth (1930 -1998) Throughout his life, Roth kept a diary: a space to record appointments, addresses, lists and deadlines but also ideas, drawings, photographs and poems. His diaries teem with graphic exuberance and proved a rich source for his work. Many of Roth’s works can be understood as kinds of diaries. In the mid 1970 s, he attempted to record a year of his life by collecting and preserving all items of waste less than 5 mm thick. The resulting work, Flat Waste, celebrates and subverts the ordering principle of a diary. He also recorded the visual state of his desks at various stages of his career. http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Sjn. Ddvq. R 2 VU

3. Drawing as an autonomous art practice “First I think , and then I draw my think. ”, Anon (child) What’ s the difference between a child’s drawing and a bushman’s drawing? “Primitive” drawings can often resemble that of children; it is dominated by the concepts of language and bears little relation to the actual naturalistic appearances. A bushman drawing has a documentary function based on real events. It accurately describes particular social scenes and/or characters. A child’s drawing is based on fantasies and it does not have a function outside the child’s immediate circles.

Children’s drawings have inspired many Modern and Contemporary artists. Cy Twombly “My line is child-like, but not childish. It is very difficult to fake; to get that quality, you need to project yourself into the child’s line. It has to be felt. ”, Cy Twombly Jean Dubuffet “The moment we stop being children , we start to die. ” Constantin Brancusi Jean Michel Basquiat

“It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well. ”, Kenneth Clarke Marks are the alphabet that forms the words that make the prose, and are the elements with which the drawing is made. One might develop one’s understanding of what constitutes the facility for good mark-making by being aware of marks that: 1. Are appropriate to our intentions –right for the job 2. Are ‘alive ‘and embody and express the ‘life-energy’ of their maker, the artist. 3. Help to communicate and express qualities of light and its invisible energy, and the material substance, form, volume, and surface of the objects which we are drawing. 4. Present the eye with changes of pace and rhythm that collectively offer variety and interest. 5. Express and stretch the properties of the medium that is drawing made from. Julie Mehretu Leonardo da Vinci

Julie Mehretu’s drawings refer to elements of mapping and architecture, achieving a calligraphic complexity that resembles turbulent atmospheres and dense social networks. Architectural renderings and aerial views of urban grids enter the work as fragments, losing their real-world specificity and challenging narrow geographic and cultural readings.

“Repeat yourself, if you like it, do it again, if you don’t like it, do it again. ”, Bruce Mau Jasper Johns, Numbers Make your drawing instrument an extension of your brain, heart, eyes, arm an hand.

Negative Space “It is not the cup , it’s the space inside the cup that is important. ” Zen proverb “Music is the space between the sounds. ”, Claude Debussy

Sketchbooks Draw everywhere , and all the time. An artist is a sketchbook with a person attached. Sketchbooks have been regarded as “information books” in which all manner of things can be recorded, stored and left to incubate. Ideas and concepts can evolve and they can be recycled at any point of one ‘s career.

Cornelia Parker, Pornographic Drawing, 2005, ink made from dissolving video tape (confiscated by HM Customs) Drawing, in the hierarchy of art forms, is always thought of as an adjunct or a lesser art than the great art of painting or sculpture. Thinking of everything I make in terms of drawing takes the pressure off, and can be very liberating. , Cornelia Parker

Drawing Competitions: Jerwood Drawing Prize(UK) Dobell Prize for Drawing(US) Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing(Australia) John Ruskin Drawing Prize Drawing Publications: Drawing Projects: An Exploration of the Language of Drawing by Mick Maslen and Jack Southern On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century , Cornelia H. Butler The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography , Katharine Harmon Vitamin D Contemporary Drawing, Margaret Davidson The Elements of Drawing by John Ruskin Writing on Drawing: Essays on Drawing Practice and Research by S Garner