DRAWING FROM DRAWING

I look at a lot of art when I am making my drawings.  Artists that I have found inspirational are Amy Sillman, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, and Picasso, to name a few.

I thought it might be helpful if I described my process to generate a drawing.  To use Picasso as an example, I might either look thru, on my phone, of photos I took of his sculptures at the MOMA show.  Or I might look thru his paintings on the site, Pablo-Ruiz-Picasso.  In either location I simply look around until I find something that I find interesting.  It might be the geometry of the artwork.  Or there might be a form or shape that I find attracting.

If I find something attractive, I don’t stop to think about it.  I simply start to draw.   To make my drawing above, I focused on the forms in the center of Picasso’s painting, “Two Naked Figures.”  I found the yellow shapes interesting, and I then drew them transparently.  Of course, I had to interpolate.  I had to guess how the forms might close on themselves.

The drawing projection that I used is, I guess, a perspective.  Although there is no vanishing point.  You might call it an axonometric.  And that would be correct also.  I find that I am more interested in drawing more in a perspectival manner than I am an axonometric.  But that is simply my personal preference, at least currently.

As I make my first drawing, I typically discover a simpler geometric arrangement.  For instance, in the drawing above, I found something particularly compelling in the forms on the right side of the paper.  When I see something like this on my paper, I then make a drawing from a drawing.

The drawing below is such a drawing from a drawing.  When I do this type of drawing, I am trying to put together a simple form that could be a building.  I use what I learned from my first drawing, and then I draw something that could be a buildable form.

So whereas the top drawing is, for the most part, not buildable.  Or let me put it that way, with the budgets that I have to adhere to, the top drawing would not be possible.  The bottom drawing is buildable.  This could be a house.  Or an office building.  Or a barn.

So my drawing from a drawing is a facet of my process that I have come to value greatly.  From this simpler drawing, I can then proceed to make a study model.  So in a way, this simpler drawing is more valuable to me than the more elaborate first drawing.

As I have said before on these pages, SITELESS and PUTTING MY MONEY WHERE MY MOUTH IS, we all need to reveal and show the steps of our creative process.  And this page is my own small contribution, which might help someone, somewhere along the line.