I DO THIS

I really appreciate Rand writing the following to me on Linkedin:

“Do you do this by looking at the elevations-or by modeling it in sketchup and doing a sketch over on a light table? It very nice concept-but why are you doing it? I thought you were bringing back trace-able onion skin drawings with multiple layers as a lost art, at least at first.”

What got me was Rand’s comment, why are you doing this?  And for a second there, I though, gee, why the hell DO I do this?  It is nice to be challenged in this way and all I can do is respond in the following paragraph:

I do this because we all need to develop the capacity to understand, simultaneously,  all sides of objects and buildings.  I do this because our spoon fed representational mode of seeing, thinking and drawing is constricting and limits our thinking.  I do this to give us, problem solvers, another dimension with which to do our job.  I do this because design provenance will have the greatest cultural value.  I do this as a reaction against the one picture tells it all mentality that pervades all media;  social (Pinterest), periodicals (magazines), print (monographs and history books), etc.  I do this as a way of separating us from art; we are not artists.  I do this as a way that we might better engage our minds with a pencil and a piece of paper.  I do this to make travel drawing more time efficient and purposeful.  I do this as a rearguard analogue action in the face of the ascendant digital machine.  I do this with the hope that a few people might just pick up that pencil and paper and show their clients a dimensional analogue drawing of their design idea.  I do this as a means to justify the cultural primacy of the superior visual system over the lingual.  I do this because I absolutely believe in the saving grace of design.

So, again, I hope this was not too forceful of a reply to Rand’s very nice comments.  I am passionate about Transparent Drawing and so I might get carried away at times.  Again, I thank them for their basic question.

And, no, I do not use a light table nor do I use Sketchup.  I do not do any tracing.  I simply construct these forms and enclosures in my mind as a dialogue with what I draw on my opaque piece of paper.  One drawing.  Holistic knowledge.

Anyone can do it.