Experimental Drawing

This is a sub-studio practice & lecture that provides an opportunity to experiment with Art, and drawing in particular.

I will endeavor to provide additions to this section to help me store some of the lessons learned from Experimental Drawing, together with providing a repository for some of the work in progress or finished work from my studies.

25-09-13  Our first excursion into the field of experimental drawing allowed us to experience the feelings of open, yet contained space.  This space could in theory be located anywhere.  In practice however, if I was to stand in a field, (i.e. an open space), I would still be within some sort of boundary, such as a wall, a fence or just my field of view.  There are also other boundaries to consider, such as where a particular type of grass grows, where it stops, where there are trees, or even notional human boundaries, such as what parish I may be in or county or property or so on.

For this exercise however, we used an old gymnasium / campus sports hall, which conveniently was in-doors and sheltered us from the rain!...  There were a myriad of boundaries to explore there. We were encouraged to look at lines and intersections, to create them, to reflect them, emphasise them, to reduce them; generally to interact with them in anyway and to  use our imagination to create something to help us interact with the boundaries that we saw.

We developed this by splitting into groups of 5 or 6 people.

I was immediately struck by a net within the sports hall, that contained a number of large exercise balls.


 The facts that the boundaries of the netting contained the balls together; not only to prevent them from falling onto the floor, but also for convenience of storage, was left behind. I was particularly interested in the lines and intersections of the netting and it's contrast with the perfectly round and spherical shapes contained within the netting, making the squareness of the netting, and it's intersections, contort, grow and shrink correspondingly to accomodate the objects.

 Thankfully, the group I belonged to, agreed that this would be a good subject for us to explore in our experiment.  We therefore re-created, not as a mirror image, but as a similarly sized representation of the image as a two dimensional rendering... Out of masking tape, stuck against the opposing wooden wall of the hall.

  

 


We then used some additional time to create a more three dimensional representation of it by extending certain features of the lines

09/10/2013 Continuing the exploration of spaces, we were encouraged in this session to consider how we can try to capture the feelings of space, within the boundaries and intersections that we impose on our views.



I was drawn again to the view I had in medium distance of the exercise balls contained within the netting in the sports hall.  I therefore captured a sketched image of a very narrow field of view, confined in the horizontal plane and elongated in the vertical.




23/10/2013 - Exploring how we consider primary sources and secondary sources, we looked at how we could dilineate and signify the Similacrum / Similarcra (worlds within worlds) and the relationships to post modern art.

Rather predictably, my attention was yet again drawn to the mid-distance view of the netted exercise balls.  This time however, I represented space and boundaries through a kind of twisted diptych. (I just love that description!)...

It was whilst I was drawing the general shape of the exercise balls that I begun a conversation with my tutor, Bob. It was a perfect moment for him to help me think differently about what I was doing and as a result, with his wise guidance, I virtually had an epiphany moment...  I realised that what I was doing was drawing and creating the mental boundaries that form the skeleton of all sketches.  We usually use an initial framework or guide to our drawings and then build on them.  In this case, had I not had that epiphany moment, I would have just simply continued with my drawing and would have eventually rendered another recreation of the spheres in the net.








However, what I did was to separate the boundaries of the net by omitting it all together from the sketch.  The next piece was to re-create an image of just the net (the boundaries with all it's intersecting lines) on it's own.  Wow this was difficult!...  Without the form of the spheres as a reference to guide me, I had to just use the lines of the netting alone to recreate the sensation that we were looking at some object contained inside it's boundaries. This reproduction I found very challenging indeed.  I had almost by accident come across a really good and hard exercise to help me practice my sketches and rendering.  I shall use this technique again and again, as it strips away the traditional way of defining a drawing and makes the whole experience of drawing much more challenging.   I'm sure that a seasoned practitioner may find the exercise relatively easy, but for myself, I really enjoyed the session and found it extremely stimulating.

So, the real exercise here was to produce a new image from an existing copy of an image, which is a Simulacrum (Plural is "simularcra").  In the two images drawn today, it would be impossible for the balls to either float in mid-air, nor would a highly flexible net be retained with a shape of the absence of the balls.  Both drawings are therefore simulacra.

20/11/2013.  Interestingly, the latest project for the group is the study of Liminal space...  Unknowingly at the time, I had drawn liminal space in the representation of the expanded netting and accompanying shadows.  This is by happy coincidence, a perfect example of liminal space.

Meanwhile, the sketching carried out today was forcing us to tackle liminality by studying the space and shadows created by an object placed into a beam of light (in our case, we used a projector, which interestingly displayed the makers brand name and an operational message, and the objects were gymnasium exercise balls).  The diffusion of light, together with the lettering and existing background court lines in the gym, provided engaging and ephemeral light and dark shadow space, which undoubtedly illustrated liminality.