LINES WITHOUT TONES

What about lines without tones?  To date, I think every drawing in these pages is comprised of lines with tones.  So can there be a useful and knowledgeable transparent drawing without tones?

I did these two examples as a way of answering this question.   The top drawing is of a small, I want to call it a performance temple, in Tokyo.  As you can see from the photo, there is a stage area which is elevated.  And I assume that small scale performances can easily be seen from an audience around three sides of the pavilion.  I used a .08 Micron felt tip, and just kept drawing all sides of the structure until it looked like it might start to turn to mud.

Directly above, I first used a felt tip, then a water soluble pencil, then a lead pencil to make the forms.  Then I used black watercolor to fill in the spaces between some of the lines as they go around the form.  The end effect, I think, is to create a more expressive, and surprising, line quality.  I used for inspiration a drawing I did two years ago, so this is a Drawing From Drawing.  This might also be called a Transparent Contour Drawing.

So how do these drawings perform?  Do they communicate the same knowledge as a line and tone drawing?  What do you think?

To my perception, at least, I see the drawings flattening.  Without the tones, the overall form is less readable.  Yet the three dimensional knowledge is still resolved.  While I do not believe that they flatten to anything close to Representational Spacetime, the sense of the flat paper is more perceptible.  Again, to my perception, I would say that they dimensionally compress to more of an Egyptian Spacetime;  there is an adjacency to the shapes on the paper that would not be there if tones had been applied.

Ok, that’s a summary of how the drawings are perceived by the viewer.  But what about the internalization of knowledge for the drawer?  To that, I would say that the knowledge internalization is nearly the same.  Your eye went all around the form.   And you drew all around the form.  So the internalization, from the act of drawing, is inviolate.

And then last point;  is it fair to call these three dimensional caricatures?  We first introduced the three dimensional caricature at this location.   I think that the bottom drawing above certainly is a caricature.