COMBINATORY CREATIVITY
Let’s imagine a fantasy class which gives equal weight to science and art. The design concepts behind Starry Night by van Gogh are just as important as the molecular arrangement of sulphur. The prime...
Monthly Archive: October 2017
LIGHT AND DEATH
People who have had near death experiences typically describe the experience as a passage into light. I could not help thinking about this as we experienced James Turrell’s Perfectly Clear (1991) at Mass MOCA....
THE SHOCK OF THE OLD
When I see an architect’s office, I can’t resist looking in the window. And I always see analogue drawings scattered across desktops. There are usually computer generated representational color images on the walls. But...
ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION
Transparent Drawing is not abstract. Yet most people, when presented with Transparent Drawing, describe it as abstract. For most of us, the drawing either looks real or it does not. And if it does...
OIL PAINT, THE MEDIUM
The problem with oil paint, the medium, is that it is opaque. “The special qualities of oil painting lent themselves to a special system of conventions for representing the visible. The sum total of...
ACRYLIC INK
The drawing above was done using acrylic ink rather than watercolors. Turns out, acrylic ink behaves nearly identically to watercolors. It applies easily with the same watercolor brush that you normally use. The washes...
BEHIND OPAQUE WALLS
Jung admonishes us to see behind opaque walls. The last chapter of Carl Jung’s book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, includes this passage: “…for me the “dividing walls” are transparent. That is my peculiarity. Others find...
HOUSE DRESS
All of this drawing of Kawakubo’s garments got me thinking about form and space. Form as in something interesting and unique to look at. Space as a volume for a human. One of the...
ALL THE DESIGN DISCIPLINES
Transparent Drawing is for all the design disciplines. Industrial Design? We have touched on it at the page Industrial Designers Do It Better. And then recently, I covered the Olivetti Valentine typewriter: see Sotsass...
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