Research - A Proposed Final Exhibition

I have had a meeting with the head of research and I have had an agreement that the college will help me fund a final exhibition that focuses on my long time involvement in drawing, both as a practice and as a pedagogy.

There will be several elements of this final exhibition.

The central focus will be of course a show of work and one fundamental issue in relation to this will be framing. Framing large drawings is problematic, and in order to build a lasting legacy I have decided to work with a framer who has had over 20 years experience and who understands the nature of the work.  We have already had a meeting and he has measured the drawings, the largest of which are 8 feet high. The first stage will be to make a model of the corner jointing system and backing supports, so that this can be used as a demonstration model for anyone wishing to pursue a similar undertaking in the future.   Each stage will be recorded and evidence of the process also posted to this blog. Andrew, the framer, was also a student on the first ever part-time access programme and he obtained his first job as a framer on finishing the access course, so it seems fitting that he is now part of the research and will help towards putting together the final legacy.  He is costing the materials this coming week and will also be bringing in equipment so that the framing can be done in the studio.

The whole process of putting the exhibition together, including making a gallery model, will also be used as a learning tool. 

The second element will be a publication that will be launched on the exhibition opening. This will be both an exhibition catalogue and pedagogic tool. Different approaches to drawing will be singled out and on the one hand directly linked to ways into understanding what lies behind my own drawings and on the other hand, the issues will be framed up as potential drawing starting points for students. This will be in a very old pedagogic tradition that includes Crispijn de Passe’s manual for artists, which has the wonderful motto on the title page, ‘Nulla dies sine linea’ (Never a day without a line). The catalogue will on the one hand be providing a commentary on the long history of drawing pedagogy and on the other providing drawing exercises for today’s generation of students as well as of course acting as an exhibition catalogue. 

I will also give a valedictory lecture, that will explore the narratives of drawing, both as an educational tool and as a philosophical statement. This will be an interweaving of clichés, experiential learning and artist statement.

Underlying all of these issues is a long standing commitment to the exploration of visual narrative and whilst the exhibition is on, I would hope to host a seminar on issues in contemporary visual narratives.

I have been given a date of January 2016 for the exhibition, so have a long lead in and hopefully plenty of time to get this together. Writing about drawing is something that I strongly believe is more akin to creative writing than something that is accessible to academic theory, and therefore I would hope to also be able to explore much more poetic approaches to the development of pedagogic languages associated with drawing within the art school curriculum.

Research

It seems a long time ago now but the research started last year has come to some sort of conclusion. This summer I have been able to finalise the idea of an Exhibition in a Box. I put together all the work I did in relation to revisiting silkscreen printing and made a complete set of 54 cards that responded to the research into Tarot. 100 sets were printed and I trailed them with an audience during a studio open weekend that was put on as part of the Chapeltown Arts festival. People seemed to quickly get the idea of how to use them and could see how they could be used to develop their own narratives.

Each set of 54 cards comes with its own box. The cards can either be used to play a Tarot type game with, or the cards can be exhibited as you would a series of small prints. I had the cards printed by a company based in Colchester and they are printed using a standard poker deck format. The majority of the cards were designed using 4 colour separations as you would design for a silkscreen print, but they were then 'flattened' so that digital prints could be made. The company were very user friendly and they print samples so that exact colour matches can be made. The final cards having a rich intensity of colour  that I believe was required to carry the weight of the possible narratives. 

Getting these cards done has allowed the final stage of my research project to now come back into focus, which is to work towards a final exhibition when I leave. This summer has been a time whereby I have been trying to write more about drawing and looking at the possibilities of combining narratives about drawing itself with narratives of life. 

Ongoing Research

I've had further meetings with Mat and Annabeth and the concept of developing the character has been taken much further by Mat.

Several issues about the relationship between movement and character have been highlighted, in particular the friction created between movement type and image. For instance the figure is designed from drawings done by myself based on a character designed to reflect my age. The character is gradually aging, not as symetrical as younger people are, showing the signs of wear and tear. However Mat was able to link the skeleton to a dancing young female figure.
See Mat's test 1 and Mat's test 2. The bend in the mind is similar to that you get when Gillian Wearing puts children's voices into the mouths of adults. I must return to this at some point.

The next stage is to develop the scenarios in more detail, therefore basic storyboarding will be needed.

Climbing and digging are both important, but I think we can start with climbing.

The other image I wanted to develop was that of a crowd simply looking at something and then turning towards the viewer. 

I am also becoming facinated by the fact that these are empty shells. The eye sockets in particular being a possible entry into a disembodied mind.

Next stage is for Mat to look at some existing footage of climbing and see if its possible to link the figure to these and then develop this as a looped piece of footage. I will also be working with Annabeth to develop some motion capture footage to see how simple things like turning a head can be done, so that eventually a crowd can turn towards the viewer. However first of all I might get back into more dancing and see what happens when gravity acts on the figure's genitals.

I eventually decided that the technology was far too impersonal and that I would have to return to hand drawing techniques.

Uncooperative men digging endlessly

Man climbing and thinking he is getting somewhere. The treadmill to nowhere

Ongoing research

The lack of blog posts reflects the fact that I have had to continue working full-time. This has had a serious impact on my ability to pursue my own work but during this time I have made a very useful contact with staff working in the media department of the college.
During the staff development week at the end of the last academic year I went to a 3D CAD introduction and then took some time to learn how to use 1,2, 3D Catch. See old posts tagged research. At the time I made some models of elements of my drawings and looked at how I could use this programme to help visualise what I was drawing. However although useful as a visualisation tool it didn't help me take the work on into any new directions. I had though at one time spoken to Annabeth about the possibility of using the new motion capture software, something I thought could be useful if I was to begin animating one of the figures from my drawing. Because I was so busy I had left this hanging, but then Matt one of Annabeth's colleagues contacted me to say he was interested in helping me realise my drawings as virtual 3D visualisations.
The first thing he asked me to do was to provide him with drawings that he could work on. He had had a look at the drawings on my website and told me that there wasn't enough information for him to be able to develop an image, so could I create a figure that could be visualised in the round. This was itself a challenge because I had never tried to create the 'average' Garry Barker figure. The people I draw are sort of stand-ins for human beings, I don't try to personalise them because they are meant to carry the narrative and are not to be read as actual people doing things. Each drawing is made up, so if you try and rotate them there is no 'real' information to latch on to. After several attempts I finally came up with this drawing.

The figure had to reflect the fact that the bodies I use are non heroic, 'normal', slightly asymmetric and a little used. Matt then took this and produced a 3D image using Maya software. 

This rendering took me back somewhat as I didn't know what I would be getting back but I realised it wasn't quite right. It needed, as Matt put it, a 'bum-crack' and genitals. 

This was the adjusted version. 

Matt then sent me the 'map' of the image, which I thought was really interesting and it triggered off all sorts of thoughts about the relationship between computer generated drawing and older drawing systems, in particular those Egyptian images where you get the sense that they understood the body as something often wrapped (I'm thinking mummification bandages here) or Cubist drawings that try to visualise all parts of the body at once. There was also a hint of those cosmological drawings of the night sky, that many cultures have produced as they attempted to personify the experience of gazing at raw nature. 

The 2D map of the 3D figure above

Visualisation of the night sky

Popova: Cubist drawing

Popova's Cubist study of a man is also about the problems static drawings encounter when trying to portray movement. What I eventually want to make are a series of short animations of my figures taking on Sisyphean tasks such as endlessly digging a hole or climbing a ladder. 

My invented figures are of course 'frozen' in their tasks, this human is forever about to move but never will. This is one of the wonderful things about static drawings, they achieve movement by implication and by the dynamics of their drawing language. However there are other ways to visualise these things

and the idea of an endless loop has started to fasinate me. 

Matt is now working on how to provide the figures with an internal skeleton. Once this is done, it should be possible for Annabeth to work with me using motion capture equipment, including a special body suit, to enable my movements to be translated into how the figure can move. This will mean me digging holes and climbing ladders in the suit and Annabeth recording the actions. 

This type of collaboration is wonderful. It opens out my own work into previously impossible territories  and by working with people that have high end technical skills, enables a 'group mind' to begin thinking about creative possibilities. For Matt my slightly worn drawings of people give him a challenge because he has to deal with their slight asymmetry and older skin appearance and for all of us there is the excitement of working towards something that uses the equipment in ways that start to test boundaries. 

  

The grey world of my drawings might in future involve movement but the concepts that underpin them don't have to be compromised, only enriched by the minds of others. 

Ongoing research

As the research continues various strands start coming together. I have made up the images for the colour separations in silk screen, so I'm ready to print, however the print room won't be available again until the second week in September. Foundation started this week and inductions are underway, so great to see the space being used but not so good for drop in access. The print room up at Blenheim Walk is also being totally rebuilt so is closed down until further notice, I presume this means it will open end of September. The idea that you can work in college during the summer is always a bit of a pipe dream, there is so much work to do, refurbishing old equipment, adjusting spaces to deal with changes in incoming student numbers, installing new machinery etc etc. 
I have therefore returned to drawing. I'm also continuing to write about drawing and have got the first chapter underway about language and time. This is quite helpful as I'm kept very aware of what drawing means as a communication tool when I'm working. I've written a lot about the way drawing can compress different information into the same space and release it simultaneously, so it makes sense for me to be looking at this as part of the research. I've taken the images I have been working on, the fires and mountains and have started to combine them in drawings. See below.

The studies are useful to my main practice as I'm including this image in the top section of a new drawing, which will hopefully be finished for a show in mid-September. The aspect of compaction I'm looking at here is one artists like Cozens or Dali used. The fact that an image can be either one thing or another. It's an old trick, but it still works to energise an image because the viewer has to engage with their own perceptions and be aware of possible alternatives. The problem is though that you need to give clues if a reading is not balanced, in this case the mountain is outweighing the fire, so I am including camp fires in the foreground of the final large drawing.  

To give an idea of what I'm writing at the moment the selection below is an extract from a chapter entitled;  'Drawing as a record of perception'. I've moved on now to look at Zen Buddhist drawings and making notes on how calligraphic brush drawings embed time in a different way. 

The extract is a reflection on a particular Watteau drawing, the Flute Player.  

‘The Flute Player’ is a typical Watteau drawing from the early 18^th century. This sketch was probably done to help him think through the content of one of his paintings. At first glance the simple reading is given to us by cultural clues, the man’s hairstyle, clothing etc. all suggest a time of roughly 300 years ago. However there is a lot more to this drawing. We can start to follow the artist’s focus and interest by reflecting on the various levels of engagement he has with differing elements. Some parts of the figure are barely there, ghosted in to support the main areas of focus, which are the face and the hands. Immediately we notice this we put ourselves back into the position of the maker, we re-live the time of the drawing’s making as our eyes re-trace the artist’s movements as he picks his way around the subject of perception. Finally we realise that one area in particular has been singled out as being the entry point into the drawing, the flute player’s left hand. The dark shading under the fingers helps to also push the space outwards towards the viewer, operating as a type of atmospheric perspective, (dark marks come forward, softer light marks recede) and recreating a moment of spatial awareness that would have been part of the initial experience. Condensed in this one image we have several time based issues operating simultaneously. The first is one of historical time, (the historical past) the second is a time of reenactment, in language we sometimes call this the past perfect progressive tense, as in “he had been drawing”, the third is however the present tense, which is constructed out of the fact that you are actively looking and your eyes scanning the image now, the present tense being what makes the drawing important, it is active today as well as being a record of the past.

So why is this important? Above all it tells us a lot about the human condition. The image embeds within itself a record of a period of skilled concentrated looking. The skill involved here is very important, it takes on average 10,000 hours for a human being to master a skill of this level. (Sennett, 2009) It is a level of accomplishment that means that the actions of the maker have become tacit; the hand is therefore released from the mind’s pressure of having to think about making and the artist can respond to the moment of perception without any barriers. We are therefore far closer to the original perceptual experience and we live as it where, in the same time as the original encounter. This is not the same as the frozen moment of a photograph, it is a layered time, one that opens out to the viewer the longer the image is looked at. The drawer’s decisions becoming more and more transparent to us as we retrace his interest via the changes in focus and attention to details encoded within the marks. In this way we develop another engagement, one with the artist himself and his own engagement with his world and its people. The grammar and syntax of this image are developed by the materials of its construction. The paper ground has a particular granular texture, this being essential to the application of the chalks, which rely on a tough surface on which to pull off tiny fragments of material from the stone-like core of the solid pastels. The touch of the artist is here vital, too much pressure and the mark clogs the grain of the paper, not enough and the trace is too light. The speed of application is also important. Each stroke becomes a sign for the eyes to follow and we track the artists hand with the same skill that our ancestors tracked the spore of a deer, being able to read as much in the differences between mark speed and weight of application, as between the weight of an animal’s imprint in soft ground and the shape and relationship of its hoof-prints as it slows down or breaks into a startled run.

Learning to read the marks that construct a drawing is something that itself takes time. A young hunter would spend several years being instructed how to read the signs of an animal’s track, in the same way a young artist needs to look at many drawings and take time to unravel the story that is frozen in the marks of their making. The more you look the more you see. Look at these marks more closely and you will see that some of them are applied with chalks that have been sharpened so that more fine detail can be picked out and other chalks are used on their sides so that broad areas can be touched in quickly. You start to realise that as the artist’s attention and focus moves his hands follow by choosing different tools or by using the same tool in a different way. When we read poetry we listen for how rhythm changes to reflect mood, or the way particular words are chosen to make us more aware of the complexity of content and how this is reflected in the sound structure of the poem. In the same way the draftsman can vary mood and contextual understanding by these changes in application and the way the ground is manipulated into becoming a space for action.  The construction of visual rhythm is vital as it on the one hand creates life, by giving a visual heartbeat to the work, and at the same time operates as a guidance system for the eyes, pushing vision quickly over certain areas and slowing it down when necessary point of focus are needed. The dark points of shadow under the left hand of the flute player in some ways operating as full stops as well as spatial indicators. The full stop in a sentence gives us time to breath and get ready to move on, but it also signals that a particular piece of information has been summed up or concluded. These points are vital to the language structure as they indicate a certain closure, the left hand being perhaps what Barthes would term the ‘punctum’ of the image, or as he helpfully put it, that which 'pierces the viewer'. (Barthes, 1993).

All of these marks are of course made by one material rubbing off onto another. In this case chalk is the material that is eroded and broken off by the paper. Chalk is one of our softest rocks, and one that has been used as a drawing material for thousands of years. Pastel is a man made variant of the naturally occurring chalk, powdered chalk being bound back together with coloured pigments using various binders, including in Watteau’s time, oatmeal and honey. The fact that this soft rock can also represent flesh and clothing, that it can be read as other than what it is, is something that every artist is acutely aware of. In particular artists working in Christian Catholic countries were aware of the importance of transubstantiation, that moment in the Mass when, “that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood…”⁹ of Christ occurs. The still magical moment when marks and lines of a drawing suddenly appear to be something else, is a singular moment that pops into being every time someone looks at a representational drawing. The moment of transformation being given more power the closer the drawing achieves a balancing act between a clear presentation of its reality, (in this case chalk marks scraped off onto a rough paper surface) and the way its marks are grouped together to suggest the appearance of something. Too much ‘photographic’ detail can inhibit this moment as the mind has no work to do in recognising what it is possible to see and uncontrolled distortion or weak observation on the part of the artist can result in a failure of the audience to recognise what is being represented. In effect a failure to control the use of the artist’s language.

A further aspect of language of course is that it can create subtlety and nuance by the use of adverbs and adjectives. These are conditioning and modifying tools and in the case of drawing the choice of implement is vital to this. Chalks have a certain softness in their application, something we can understand if we contrast chalk with other materials. Imagine this drawing done in pen and ink, it would be too harsh, too firm in its tone. Chalk can caress the surface and yet still be controlled well enough to suggest an underlying firmness, the musician’s head clearly has a firm bone structure beneath it. However chalk handled in this way, also suggests a fragility, a gentle light touch, the rapidity of its application further suggesting the rapid passing of time. This brings us to a further, deeper realization of time within the drawing. These fleeting glimpses of a man playing a flute are also a metaphor for the fragility of all our lives. As the man plays he is playing a forgotten tune, one that will drift off and quickly fade away. The drawing’s lightness of touch being one that reminds us of smoke forms drifting through a room or clouds making momentary images as they shape-shift across the sky.

The composition and overall formal relationships are used to fuse the elements together and organise our reception of them. Again rhythm is vital to this and the swirling movement of the body and soft curves of the clothes and hair echo the sound of music coming from the flute, which itself is the only straight line in the composition, a diagonal linking hands with mouth and giving the eyes a moment of rest. Watteau catches a brief moment and holds it for us, but as we bring this moment back into the present through our engagement with it, we are also affected by the realisation of its import. Behind the membrane of the paper surface lies an intuition of the world of the dead and their spirits and for brief moment as we look at this drawing, we can perhaps in our minds touch the surface of the Paleolithic cave wall and from behind it feel the trembling hearts of our long dead ancestors. In some ways every drawing reenacts all the other drawings that have been done since humans first made them over 30,000 years ago. We are still the same species and still have the same short lifespan within which to experience, birth, growing up, maturity, old age and death. The tools we developed to help us get through were honed to perfection a long time ago, and as part of our realisation of what it is to be alive now, we should celebrate this.