Contours and colour

My love of cartography (topographic detail described through contour lines) and cel animation (flat areas of colour surrounded by black lines) comes together in a few recent drawings with the aid of Autodesk's SketchBook Pro software.

Meeting look

Looking up

Landscape 3

Camping drawings

A few drawings made during some recent camping trips with the kids. Small format, mainly pencil, watercolour, and soluble crayon.

Tree line 1

Tree line 2

 Tree line 3

Hog

Feeding pig

 

Debden Woods

Ephemera

 

Ephemera

19 x 28.5 cm

pen on paper

Ephemera 2

19 x 28.5 cm

pen on paper

In the lounge

Typical behaviour.

The lounge 

19 x 28.5 cm

pen on paper

Why don't artists have writers' groups?

One of the great things about making art is the fact that it is largely a solo activity. It's an opportunity for quiet, self reflective thought, temporarily cut off from the normal day-to-day distractions of things like making a living and running a family. Working in the studio provides an increasingly rare oasis of solitude where you can be alone with your thoughts immersed in the process of reifying feelings, ideas and observations.

On the other hand, one of the worst things about making art is the fact that it is largely a solo activity. It's an activity that places you in abject isolation with your thoughts and cuts you off from the orientating effects of being in a group and seeing your work in relation to other work and other people. The studio can a scary place where wrestling with your limitations, deciding what to do, and finding your way through the infinite number of choices and decisions in the absence of a client brief or set of instructions can feel lonely and demoralising.

Both of these views are true at the same time. I know this because I've experienced both myself, and I hear these thoughts from my friends who are artists as well. From the outside, making art looks very romantic; made up of blissful days filled with the pleasures of working in a quite studio. But this is only one side of the experience. The other side consists of hours of isolation locked in battle with your innermost doubts about yourself and your abilities.

This sense of isolation and working in a vacuum, is, I believe, one of the main reasons why people don't make more art. The fear of being cut off from any kind of interaction with other people both during the making of the work, and more  importantly, after the work is made, can overshadow the many enjoyable and positive aspects of art making and can stop the creative process in its tracks.

I think all artists in one way or another wrestle with these demons of doubt created by the inherently solo nature of the work. But my question is, why wrestle alone? If most artists struggle with these challenges to self-esteem and the sense of value for time spent in the studio, why struggle in isolation? Why not come together and form a network of critical / supportive collaborators?

Writers have developed a mechanism to address this challenge: the writers' group. A group of writers, each with their own reasons for writing, all at different levels of ability, come together to share their work, test ideas, receive feedback, and learn from each other. For some reason, writers seem to understand the power that emerges  when a group of people engaged in their own personal creative struggle come together to challenge, support and encourage.

But where can an artist go for this kind of conversation? Classes? Workshops? The Internet? 

In the last year or so I've been to some life drawing classes here in London assuming that in addition to drawing, this would be a good opportunity to engage other artists in a dialogue about the work and how it is perceived. But this isn't the case at all. These classes are often just as quiet and isolated as working alone in my studio. Although I had fully expected to engage in a bit of discussion about the work, most of the time is spent in silence. Besides, the conversation, even if it did happen, would focus largely on the techniques employed in the drawings in the classroom, not on the work I am struggling with in my studio.

I've read about some really interesting and quite inspired workshops for artists and other creative-types. Although they sound like a lot of fun, the spirit of many of these sessions are about encouraging camaraderie, participation and enjoyment. The thing I think they often lack is any form of critical feedback or conversational depth in the pursuit of excellence.

I'm sure the internet has made a huge difference here. A quick trawl of blogs by other artists quickly surfaces sites where people show their work-in-progress to the entire world for comment and acknowledgement. I'm sure that the comments that people receive are helpful in providing an uplifting sense of energy for the artists. But the comments are simply that: comments. They are often one-line reactions to the work. Although potentially uplifting, these comments lack the depth and nuance that comes from a face-to-face conversation. Twitter is great, but it is no substitute for a full and proper dialogue. 

So my question is, if the writers' group model works for writers, would it work for artists?

I think it could. Perhaps it works for writers because the medium of writing is language, and using language to talk about stories feels somehow natural. Fair enough. But I suspect that there are a lot of artists out there who would be great collaborators, co-conspirators, conversationalists, and critical friends. I'm thinking of artists who are doing independent work, not just wrestling with technique, but interested in how their work is connected to feelings and generates meaning. Artists who are looking for something more formal than a chat at the pub; interested in engaging in a constructive forum to talk in detail about their work and to offer their reactions to the work created by other artists. Artists not looking to be taught by a teacher, but interested in learning through the facilitated interaction with other artists who are engaged in the struggle for excellence.

Maybe the model I'm thinking of is the 'crit'. When I was at university studying printmaking, we had group crits (critiques) where everyone hung their work in an impromptu gallery set-up and talked about what was going on in the piece. When managed properly, these were rich discussions where everyone involved got something out of it - not just the people whose work was on display.

Sure, something like this would take time to settle in and find the right level. And yes, it would take some careful facilitation, and everyone involved would need to understand and adhere to the code of conduct agreed by the group. But I think it could work.

Watch this space. 

Drawing on evidence

Next time you're at an art exhibition try this experiment: Ask the person you are with to imagine that they can steal one picture from the exhibition and take it home: which one would they steal? Then, at the end of your visit, compare your answers and try to figure out why you each chose the images you did.

Sometimes the answers are personal and wrapped up in a complex array of feelings about the particular subject matter in the picture. But very often the selection seems to have a lot to do with subtle, almost indescribable features of the image that reach into our psyche and resonate somewhere deep inside. It is often very hard to put into words our reasons for the connection we feel with certain pieces of art. I think that we are often attracted to images and stories that seem to vibrate with a kind of 'truth'. And by truth, I mean a version of reality that seems to correspond with the world as we understand it to be.

Exactitude is not truth.
- Henri Matisse

Truth in image making is a kind of accuracy – but it is not synonymous with photographic accuracy. Truth, I think, is the ability to reveal the things that are important but not visible; things that once we see them through art we feel they are undeniably and unquestionably self-evident.

Images can express different kinds of truths; visual truths about appearance, conceptual truths about ideas, or compositional truths about relationships. And I believe that trying to express these truths in a compelling way is what the struggle of making art is really all about.

Truth in drawing or painting emerges through the ability of the maker of the image to marshal the evidence before them in a compelling way. All art is based on some form of evidence. The evidence that artists draw on is the visual and conceptual reality that acts as a reference point in the creation of the image. When making an image an artist is constantly referring to information gathered through a form of direct or reflective investigation. The evidence base includes an infinite range of perceptions such as the subtle way an edge of a form blends into the background, the unique way light falls on a particular surface, the tension that might exist in the relationship between objects or people, the feeling that is created by the sound or smell of a place, and so on.

Through a combination of observation and intuition, 'facts' are gathered about the subject of the image and this evidence is organised and presented through the medium of the work. An artist chooses what is important and constructs the image through a process of aesthetic selection and decision-making. Truth in image making comes from the ability to access the evidence, assess it carefully, select what is important, and organise that evidence in a way that give others a way to see the world through fresh eyes. When in the presence of an image that moves us, I think we are often being presented with irrefutable evidence organised in a compelling way.

Evidence is not a word that is spoken in creative circles very often. Some believe that creativity is all about inventing things out of thin air; a kind of “making things up” using leaps of imagination by pulling ideas and imagery from out of nowhere. Under this definition, creativity is regarded as the ability to actually disengage from facts and evidence in the mistaken belief that taking time to see and listen to the world as it is, to treat things as phenomenological experiences that provide a foundation of information to fuel the creative process, is somehow limiting. For some, drawing and painting is an act of unbridled liberation from the confines of being connected to what is happening around us as participants in what it means to be human. To introduce the need to be faithful to evidence of any kind is, for some, a form of slavery to be resisted at all costs. This kind of detached creativity often produces images (and products and brands and lots of other things) that are seductive on the surface but lack depth, intrigue (truth) underneath.

Making art of any kind is, in some ways, a lot like being a researcher. A researcher is obligated to present the facts and evidence in a truthful and accurate way. I've seen many researchers who focus on presenting the facts objectively. But the problem is, research, like art, is not objective - it is entirely subjective. Where we look and the questions we ask are motivated by subjectivity. And the most skilful researchers find a way to present facts and evidence in a way that is not just a replay of the data in the same sort of way that a photograph can play back the visual data of a situation via a detached “eye”. Great researchers present the evidence in a way that does a lot more than confirm what the world looks like. They apply a subjective lens and tell us a “story” through the evidence that resonates precisely because it touches our deep understanding of the world but does it in a way that helps us see the facts as they are but through clearer eyes.

The camera sees everything at once – we don’t. There is a hierarchy.
- David Hockney

Great drawing and great research are both engaged in the observation and presentation of evidence in a way that illuminates and creates insight into what it means to be a human being. Through both disciplines we are presented with facts and evidence in an attempt to translate them into a compelling picture that is both truthful and resonates with the viewer/listener. The harder a researcher or artist looks and the deeper they probe into the reality of their subject, the richer the evidence base will be and the potentially richer the resulting work will become.

Two pens, three drawings

Double head

56 x 38 cm

pen on paper

Focus group

56 x 38 cm

pen on paper

Head 2

38 x 28.5 cm

pen and red biro on paper

Are doodling and drawing the same thing?

In any meeting inside any organisation in any part of the world, there is likely to be at least one doodler. This is the person who appears to be taking studious notes during the meeting, but is in actual fact busily filling the margins of their notebook with a complex mosaic of patterns, textures, shapes and figures in blue biro.  

I’m always surprised when the doodler, after several uninterrupted minutes of concentrated mark making, lifts their head and adds a useful comment in the discussion that is taking place around them. How is this possible? How can they have such focused and dedicated concentration on their drawing, and yet still manage to follow the flow of the conversation?

The reason, I’ve discovered, is because although doodling and drawing look the same from the outside, are very different on the inside.

Doodling, as it turns out, is a kind of listening, not a kind of drawing. Mark making for a doodler is a way of translating the energy involved in the processing of what they are hearing in the meeting into a form of visual notation. Doodling is a lot closer to taking written notes than it is to making an image. When a doodler returns to their doodle after the meeting, the image seems to contain the memory of the things that were spoken in the room. A doodler can often look at their doodle days or even weeks later and recall elements of the conversation that took place with great precision. This is because the image takes them back to the time of creation. Although the marks are not illustrations of what has been spoken about in the meeting, the marks seem to unlock the memory of the conversation. The intricate patterns and stream-of-consciousness imagery are a kind of mnemonic hieroglyph. 

The doodlers I’ve spoken to about this report that they can listen better and have greater recall when they doodle in a meeting. Some say that without doodling they would need to have eye contact with other people in the room which would be a distraction to their ability to listen effectively. Somehow, by doodling, they effectively create an internal feedback loop that transfers the energy involved in processing what is being heard into a graphic mark that serves as both a record of the information and a key to unlock the memory of the discussion at a later date.

But I find doodling very odd. This is because I draw, but I don’t doodle. Actually it’s not that I don’t doodle, it’s that I can’t doodle. I don’t have anything against doodling (it looks like a great way to spend time in a meeting, and it has practical benefits), it’s just that the second my pen touches the paper to create an image, my focus shifts entirely to the drawing being created and my awareness of the conversation around me stops almost entirely. I don’t understand how people can draw and listen at the same time. My brain just isn’t wired for doodling. And I suspect it is the same for many people who draw.

Drawing, for me, is an all-consuming act of decision-making and selection. Even casual sketching requires a degree of focus that won’t allow information that is not central to the creation of the image to interrupt the flow of the thinking-deciding-mark making. So drawing, for me, is very different from doodling. Doodling is a way to listen and recall. Drawing is a way to see and translate.

Next time you see someone in a meeting making an image, ask them whether they are doodling or drawing. If they’re doodling, then let them carry on, but if they’re drawing then it might be best to suggest they put down their pen and pay attention.

[For more on this, you can see a very passionate and lucid description of the doodling process and its advantages in a TED talk by Sunni Brown at:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sunni_brown.html 

Same fish, six times

A recent studio tidy-up unearthed a series of small paintings from a while back. Each one is 15 x 20 cm done in acrylic house paint on canvas. 

Material differences

Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I have recently started using a little drawing app on my iPhone. After trying a few different ones, I eventually settled on Sketchbook Mobile by Autodesk. It's actually a great little program with a wide range of tools to use that, in the right hands, can produce some pretty sophisticated images.

Me, I just stick to the basic stuff. I like to draw so I mainly use the tools that look a little like the pencils and pens I carry around in my bag normally. Maybe it's my early days as a cartoon animator back in Philadelphia, but I also like to play around with adding colour on a different layer that I can edit separately from the original drawing. I can then incorporate the colour to the sketch by placing the layer with the colour under the one with the lines - just like painting the back of an animation cel (back in the days when animators did that sort of thing).

It's a fun app to use, and I invested in a little stylus as well that allows me to draw with something that resembles a pencil instead of having to use my finger all the time. It's just like drawing in a sketchbook, except it's on the phone, right? 

Well, not exactly.

But before I get into the differences, let me start with the similarities. In some basic ways, drawing with the iPhone and drawing on paper are a lot alike. The feeling of "flow" that I experience when drawing with a pen and paper, also comes on when I am drawing with an electronic pencil in the app. When I'm involved in the process of actual mark making, these two experiences share very similar qualities. In both cases, I completely lose track of time and my connection with whatever I am drawing seems to become tightly fused through the act of looking and drawing. The feeling is hard to describe, but I know when it's there - and when it isn't.

The thing that I've noticed is that this feeling of flow and connection is broken when using the app whenever I need to engage the interface to change to a different drawing tool or select a new colour to use. This doesn't happen when working in traditional media. When I'm working on paper using physical materials, choosing a different pencil or dipping a brush into a different paint colour is all part of the same experience of being in connection with the drawing process. But with the on-screen app, this process of having to use an interface to mediate my decisions about which pencil, pen, brush, or colour to use seems to engage a different part of my brain. My decision-making process has to conform to the rules and limitations of the software. This activation of a different, and no doubt logical, thinking process often jolts me out of the sense of flow and connection with the drawing process. In this moment of choosing a new tool, I can clearly feel a different thought process taking over; one that is more distant and judging. New questions about the image pop into my head, and I can feel a different editorial conversation starting to emerge. In that moment, I'm no longer connected to the image. I am a viewer making a critical assessment of its worth as an object in the world.

Now, is this such a big deal? Not really I guess. It's just that we often assume that these new tools that are being used with increasing frequency by artists and designers are experientially synonymous with traditional physical media. But they're not the same. We engage different parts of our brains when using these digital tools, and the artwork we produce using them is naturally altered as a result.

The tools and materials we use to draw require different kinds of thinking and engagement in our brains. The sense of flow that is so fundamental to the image making process is, I think, interrupted by this constant switching between right brain intuitive connection to left brain logical selection.

Now, I'm not making a value judgement here. Artists using digital tools can, and do, create fantastic and moving imagery. I'm just noting that these two experiences of drawing are not the same, so let's not pretend they are. 

Does this matter? Most of the time, probably not. But sometimes it certainly does. If we are more attentive to the differences in how these digital tools change both the experience, and therefore, the output of our creative work, we may cast a more critical eye when choosing the right tools for the job.

All that said, here are a selection of a few recent digital drawings. 

Nine variations on a wheelie bag

I travel a bit for business. As such, I tend to see a fair number of these along the way. Here are nine in various media; each 28 x 19 cm.

Clarinet player

A little sketch from a night out with Claire. 

A few recent (small) drawings

Here are a few sketches done over the Christmas and New Year break. They were done at the South Bank, on the tube, and in the living room of my sister-in-law.