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| Causeway, Through Windshield (Drwg #2) |
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| Causeway, the Water on Both Sides (Drwg #3) |
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| Causeway and Winter Fleet (Drwg #1) |
I am not satisfied with the detailed and fairly accurate drawings I'd done this winter, especially those done at the causeway. I've learnt a huge amount from doing them; about the causeway, about various boats there, about perspective, and about how I interact with my drawings. I know they are good- enough for what they are; representational drawings, but they didn't satisfy me any more. I felt cross about drawing, not conducive to doing decent drawing. Scribble drawings help alleviate that a bit, but they're not what I want to do a lot of right now: they lack substance, the substance of subject matter I love. This is part of why I stopped drawing; I was doing too much reportage, like a news reporter. I wanted to do opinion pieces, visual opinions, visual responses to those facts.
However, I don't perceive the causeway as I drew it, and didn't know what to do differently. I wanted to say, "See how my world looks to me!" My "just the facts ma'am" approach became boring, or at least the challenge wasn't where or what I wanted. The ideas in these two books suddenly gave me a huge AHA! in the wee hours this morning so I got out my sketchbook and drew the causeway as I perceive it, which is not the way it looks. The way I see it when I am "loving" it is from inside my body with the causeway all around me, not set off in some rectangle apart from me on a flat piece of paper. I am inside the causeway's universe, not a disinterested bystander waiting in some line, unaware of my own presence and location. I wanted to show that; to show how it is full of curves; curving road, curvy boats, lightly loopy wires, curly frothy foam spewing up through the sluice; signs of many shapes and leaning at many angles in some sort of counterpoint to the leaning hydro poles; curvy lines emphasized by straight ones among them.
I think these drawings are a step towards letting out my response, my opinion; letting it be seen and thought about - and responded to in turn. I am happy with the direction in which they are prodding me, at least for today.
4 comments:
You made a similar comment about mirrors in drawings once before, and it made me try to think of any other way to do something similar but in a different way. Unfortunately a mirror is a bit of a one-pony-trick (instead of a one-trick-pony); it's the only tool that does quite what it does. To be inside the painting... how? Maybe painting the inside surface of a loop? People have done circular panoramas before... anyway, thinking... and you've really expressed this very well here.
I think there is one other "pony" that can do this trick: still water. Looking over the side of a boat through the surface of the water to what's below and also seeing the side of the boat reflected would be another way to draw (not with pen!) the viewer into the picture.
Also, ignoring or "destroying" one-point perspective such as painters do and David Hockney did with his landscape paintings of his native Bradford, and also with his multiple-view photograph assemblages. Hockney clarifies this far better than I can - especially in this tiny space!
See both his "That's the way I see it", and also "Hockney on "Art"", by a photographer (who interviewed Hockney over a decade or more). Unfortunately my copy of that book is out on loan and so I cannot tell you the author, although it might be ---- Joyce.
The first 2 lines of 2nd paragraph is not a sentence and I cannot figure out how to add the words "...are other techniques for drawing in the viewer."
...and I think your causeway drawings are very David Hockney-ish! And Emily... the inside surface of a loop?
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