STRING DRAWING

String Drawing is a new Transparent Drawing Means of Assembly. This joins other assemblies such as Woven Drawing, One Line One Wash, etc.

String Drawing is most effective when it is applied to a Transparent Drawing mode such as Drawing At the Boundary of Form. That is to say, it will not likely yield sufficient knowledge for Analysis Of Form.

It is very simple. To start, all you do is take an acrylic ink soaked string and arrange it on your paper so as to leave an ink line, of some sort. And you go from there.

When the string deposits ink elements, or one might call them blobs, the ink deposits are thick. Which means they take a long time to dry. Which is perfect. The thick wet blobs then allow you to draw between them as you make initial moves toward form. The top photograph shows me doing just that.

I moved the pencil led thru the blobs, and a drawn line resulted. Some of the drawn lines connected to other ink blobs, and others did not. I used the string lines as initial guides to form as I drew using an ink coated pencil tip. So the mode of Automatic Form is also in play here.

The string you choose will have a dramatic effect on the line quality. I first tried dental floss: that was too thin and because it is more or less plastic, it did not soak up any ink, so hardly anything was deposited on the paper. I also tried a nylon kite string, which while thicker, again did not deposit much ink. I then found some cotton twine about 1/16″ in diameter. This is the string pictured directly above.

For each string, I worked it into the bottle of ink. Rubber gloves are a good idea, as this process will deposit ink on your hands. After getting the string fully into the bottle, I pulled it out. And then arranged the wet string on the paper. I found I had to push the string gently into the paper to assure ink transfer. Again, rubber gloves make this far less of a mess than it could be.

Try any sort of string type material that you can think of. I want to try shoe laces, yarn, thin nautical rope, etc.

If anyone is keeping score, you might say, well, arranging an ink soaked string on a piece of paper is not drawing, as defined in Transparent Drawing. And you would be correct. However, the actual drawing starts when you apply your pencil to the ink blobs. Then you start to knowledge. Then you are moving toward form.

To compete the drawing, I waited until everything dried. Then I drew with a pencil a suggestion of form, using the geometry already deposited on the paper. A few light watercolor tones was the last step. As I was finishing, I started to get associations of Henry Moore, given the organic knowledge of his drawings. Or maybe it is some sort of ultra high tech athletic shoe.

I’m not sure that String Drawing will make it into the book, given that we are in the throes of editing right now. Which makes complete sense, given the open ended structure of Transparent Drawing.