Drawing/Thinking: Confronting an Electronic Age
(2) Architects. Drawings, and Modes of Conception. Mark Alan Hewitt p.28
Both artists employ a habitual mental process that Gombrich calls "schema and correction" or "making and matching". I prefer to use the post-information age term "feedback loop", that describes the iterations of (1) mental image or idea; (2) representation of the idea on paper through drawing; (3) comparison between the perception of the drawn image and the mental "schema", and (4) the correction or alteration of the drawing to better capture the mental concept. All designers employ this cycle of conception, representation, and perception.
(5) The Euphoria of the Everyday. Anthony Dubovsky p.72/73
Drawing each day: Engagement. The journal. Working everyday is crucial. It's a kind of returning to your source. The painter Philip Guston once said that you have to be in the studio each day because you never know when the angel will visit - and if you weren't there in the studio, you might miss out. I like the notion of a drawing as something "given" (from the angel, in Gurston's sense), but there's another factor here as well. And that's the dailiness in and of itself. Maybe it's an enjoyment of ritual - the feeling of re-engaging, or even a kind of testing of fate - will it happen again? Will a new drawing appear? We engage with the angel - and with daily-ness - by drawing each day.
p.78 The columns of text in these drawings to various things. Just by their presence, they imply a certain meaning. That is when we see text, we assume meaning (much in the same way that when we see a photograph we assume it is "meaningful"). But more than this, the writing offers a kind of visual parallel to the drawing: just as each drawn line follows the next, so with the words. Some might think of this as aleatory, but for me it's not at all a matter of chance. What's important, instead, are the underlying (web of) associations - associations connected by a pathway of feeling. This isn't a very efficient description - after all, isn't everything potentially a "pathway of feeling" - given that we're living creatures and that we apprehend the world through our senses? Nevertheless, finding one's way (along this pathway) is what's crucial...how one element leads to another.
...Why in the upper right? Well, sometimes they're in the upper left - although placing the writing on the right emphasizes (subtly, at least) that the writing follows the drawing. (...) If the writing ran all the way across, it would seem more like a standard "written" diary. Here the column works as a visual element on the page. Also, the narrowness of the column allows for the rest of the page - up and down- to remain open. An openness that reads as space.
(6) More than Wriggling Your Wrist (or Your Mouse): Thinking, Seeing and Drawing. Laurie Olin
p.94 I put aside pen, pencils, and brushes, and for several months drew only with sticks that I cut from shrubs in the woods about me. Immediately there was a freedom and clarity. The lines that resulted were highly variable and expressive unlike, those produced by the pens I'd been using until then...The drawings were made a few lines at a time, built up with each stroke and squiggle. I had to slow down in order to be more free, but going slow felt like going fast.
(7) Drawing Life, Drawing Ideas. Christopher Grubbs
p.104 At the very end of the process I examine the drawing upside down. Inverting the drawing drains it of familiar aspects so that it can be read as a more purely graphic composition integrated or balanced, or not.
Emotional involvement with a place always affects the making of a drawing. There was no way mine could be a detatched aesthetic inquiry. Instead, it would challenge my emotional balance as well as my technical skills.
p.109 My finished work is small, usually measuring around 4" x 6", but this is no restriction. With the advent of sophisticated digital reproduction technology a postcard can readily become a billboard. And by working small I avoid a major problem that comes with large-scale drawings: the more space I have to cover, the more specific and numerous my questions must be for the designer who, especially in the early stages of work, may not be prepared with all the answers. In a small drawing. answers can be inferred or deferred.
(8) Drawing in the Digital Age. Errol Barron.
Recording. p113 Drawing requires time, and today one records less for future appliction than as a gathering of the visual sensations and data from primary experience over time.
...While photography captures a moment "that will never exist again", drawing - especially sustained drawing - embodies a "moment" that never truly existed. It comprises, instead, a compendium of moments that as a totality conveys a narrative or a set of ideas embedded in the image. The time required to make a detailed drawing becomes a period of absorbing - seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and thinking. It is an interval during which time is slowed, when objects shed their mute quality and speak. In the process, things at first unimportant assume significance and become vivid.
Sensation p.115. Much of drawing's value derives from its immediacy and its link between what one thinks and what one feels. As one gains insights into a problem, information can be added quickly - materials and detail may enter play at an early stage, even when very little is known about the ultimate outcome.
