BACKGROUNDS

Putting a background tone on drawings is a great thing.  A background can serve as a contrast to the content of a drawing.  When you fill the entire page with a tone, the graphic impact becomes very strong.  The effect becomes more like photograph, with all of that attendant impact, contrast and apparent realism.

But not so fast.

In Transparent Drawing, you can’t simply add a flat tone on your paper.  Because if you do, you are reverting to old school realism.  Adding a tone to just add a tone should not be done because this tone has no dimension.  This tone is not an object.  Adding a flat tone just to make the drawing pretty is reverting to art, which of course we do not subscribe to.  Adding a non dimensional tone is what artists and graphics people do.  It is not what problem solvers do.

At first, this is not an easy thing to accept.  Any of us who have any graphic experience almost automatically want to give some sort of background tone to our drawings.  A flat tone like this is a cultural artifact.  It is what we are taught to do without thinking.

So I think I have a solution.  Any background tone that you want to incorporate into your drawing has to have a three dimensionality to it.  In the above drawing, I wanted to use a background tone.  So I simply drew a three dimensional rectangle.  And the tones that I applied to the rectangle serve as the background.

The overlapping transparent tones reinforce the sense that the background tone is an object.  And the benefits of increased graphic pop is achieved, somewhat, while still remaining true to the principals of Transparent Drawing.

Now you might say that the above drawing is still somewhat representational.  Otherwise, the background rectangle would be visible thru the figure.  And this is certainly a valid criticism.  To be completely true to our philosophy, the background element should be visible.

So I deviated into pretty picture representation as a knee jerk reaction.  Like I said, it is difficult to rid yourself absolutely from the pretty picture representational mindset.  These cultural artifacts are difficult to get rid of.

Quite possibly, what we are saying here is that background tones are simply not allowed in Transparent Drawing.  Any tone that is put on our paper must be a component of the problem solving resolution. Any tone we put on our paper must be part of the holistic envelope.

Accepted drawing conventions are difficult habits to break.  Yet break them we must if we are to maintain the Transparent Drawing mindset of the new era.