DRAWING MATERIALITY 5

This is our 5th installment of Drawing Materiality.  Because we are 100% analogue, when we draw, we are celebrating our humanity.  Make material marks.    

As any perusal of my Transparent Drawings will reveal, I employ a wide range of media and media sequences.  I typically am never happy to keep drawing with the same Assembly.  While that does not create a brand identity, conformity, even to my own work, is, frankly, boring.  I’m always asking myself, what if I first use this, and then add that?  And when that little voice in my head asks that question, I do it.  

So I surprised myself when I found that I wanted to keep exploring the potentials of the Assembly that is shown on these drawings.  The Assembly is very simple:  yellow wash is put over black chalk pastel, and black wash is put over yellow chalk pastel.  When the water based wash is put over the chalk lines, sometimes the wash dissolves the chalk, while other times the wash goes around the line.  Sometimes you get floating chalk bits.  There is a physicality to the dissolving / flowing / blending that occurs when water and chalk pastel are used together.  Sometimes the wash attracts to the chalk, and physically attaches itself. Sometimes it repels. This basic yellow / black orientation can then be used for holistic form any way that you can imagine.  I’ve used this Assembly for about 10 drawings so far.  

Below, I have listed the basic steps that were taken for the three drawings.  Yet in a way, part of me does not want to tell you that, as this is, as I have said from the very beginning, not about how you are supposed to draw.  

I fervently feel that we teach ourselves.  Even if you are “taught” something, you won’t intake that knowledge unless you are receptive to it.  Nobody opens your head and puts knowledge into it.  Nobody should ever tell you how to draw.  The human act of picking up something and then making a mark with it is fundamental to our being.  

Make material marks and celebrate your humanity.  Forget Representational Spacetime.  Draw with time.  There is great satisfaction in holistic form.  

Assembly Sequence:
1.  With on Source Image, establish geometry on your paper:  I used an 08 GellyRoll pen in Black.
2.  With a second Source Image, establish that geometry, using a different (Orange) color pen.  At this point we have a Form Combine.
3.  With a third color GellyRoll (Pink), use the overlapping geometry to being to create a holistic form.  Let’s call this the Pink Form
4.  Enhance the Pink Form with the chalk pastel.  If you are thinking that the form should be black, then first use yellow pastel.  With the yellow chalk continue to define the form.
5.  Apply black wash to the yellow pastel.
6.  Continue to enrich and define the form with black chalk.
7.  Now apply yellow wash to the black chalk lines.
And that’s basically it.  For some of the drawings, I applied light grey lines with a GellyRoll to further elucidate form.  Or a light color Prismacolor works well over the black areas (bottom drawing).  And I typically fix the media to the paper with a light coat of clear acrylic spray.