KNOWLEDGE DRAWING
Drawings used to be vessels of knowledge. Yet the trajectory of vision has led to detachment. Instead of a body centered experience, the distancing, as we have seen, promotes the nihilistic attitude that pervades...
Author: Kurt
SUPERFICIAL IMAGES
Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida have all argued that the dominance of vision in our culture has only served to separate ourselves from the world. While I don’t agree with this premise, I do understand...
SPECTATOR CULTURE
The other evening, we made a design presentation in front of a municipal board for a new building. As usual, we brought in an architectural massing model. And we always work to give the...
AMAZING TRANSPARENCY
Art Qlate commented on Facebook about, to use their term, amazing transparency. They ask which brand of watercolors I use. First of all, thanks to Art for their very kind comments. The short answer...
SPECTATOR THEORY AND JOHN DEWEY
We are not spectators. We are dynamic beings. We move around. We engage with the world in three dimensions. Yet our culture conditions us to be spectators. Spectator theory insists that the world is...
OSMOTIC DRAWING
Our critique of the one point perspective, it turns out, has had many supporting voices over the centuries. One result is osmotic drawing. Maurice Merlaeau-Ponty was intensely critical of the ‘Cartesian perspectivalist scopic regime’. ...
CREATIVE DETAIL
We need to share details of our creative methods and processes. A couple of pages ago, I lamented that we don’t share any of the creative details of how we are inspired. For example,...
ALL ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
Reading in Bachelard, it was gratifying to hear him contemplate memory, space and time. He posits the theory that memory is free of time. That is to say, our memories are devoid of a...
WHAT IS AND WHAT WILL BE
In Transparent Drawing, you draw to solve what is to be built, and you draw to solve what has already been built. Either way it is the same problem that requires a solution. That...
HOW DOES IT FEEL?
I mentioned a couple of pages ago that I like the Staedtler Mars 4B pencils, which I use to draw in my Moleskine Watercolor sketchbooks. Of course there are thousands of pencil and paper...
CHEAP WATERCOLOR SETS
Two pages ago, I offered thoughts on watercolor sets. I also commented on the cost. The three sets that I highlighted were all around $70. In the whole scheme of things, when a tank...
THE LIVING IS FUZZY
Reading more from the Poetics of Space, “His task is that of proceeding phenominologically to images that have not been experienced, and which life does not prepare, but which the poet creates; of living...
PAINTS AND BRUSHES
Christian writes in with the following query: “Just found your site searching for La Tourette images. I was wondering what materials you use and in what order? I’ve been using a water brush and...
SEEING IS KNOWLEDGE
There are so many books sources stacked up on my desk, I have no idea how I will ever get thru them all. And I am starting to get concerned that I am going...
THINKING IN BETWEEN
Es Devlin, who is the most prominent set designer in the world, thinks like a transparent drawer. In Andrew O’Hagen’s article, Imaginary Spaces, in the 28 March 16 issue of The New Yorker, he...
ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM
I didn’t like it. There, I said it. I did not like the Royal Ontario Museum. With the famous architect (Liebskind) and the famous theory (deconstructivism) and the building budget (obviously huge), I had...
DOGON MALI AT AGO
Since we are away this week, I offer this drawing from one of our recent travels. When we were in Toronto, and toured the Art Gallery of Ontario, I came upon this interesting piece...
DESIGN RISK COEFFICIENT
Is it fair to say that our clients gamble when they say yes to a design concept? While we typically don’t use the word gamble to apply to design selection, when faced with an...
THE PROOF IS ON THE PAPER
Visual Facts is a concept introduced here at transparent drawing. For a very brief primer on Visual Facts, this link takes you to a previous page. The word fact is, etymologically, an act or...
NYIT WORKSHOP – DRAWING 2
This is the second part of the Transparent Drawing workshop held in Professor Frangos’ first year design studio at New York Institute of Technology last week. The first installment can be found on the...
NYIT WORKSHOP – DRAWING 1
Naomi Frangos, Associate Professor of Architecture at New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury Campus, Long Island, heroically invited me to give a Transparent Drawing workshop for her first year architecture design studio. The...
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