THE WIREFRAME

Does the drawing above look like a wireframe drawing?  Or, do any of the drawings on this site look like wireframes?  I don’t think they do.  Yet in two recent conversations with friends about Transparent Drawing, they basically ask, isn’t this the same as a wireframe?  So let’s look into this association and see where we go.

In this digital age, the term wireframe has come to be associated solely with digital input and manipulation.  A digital wireframe is the rough polygonal construct which underlies the realistic representation.  It is the framework on which the more realistic representational elements are attached.  It is the underlying structure of all digital three dimensional representations / simulations.  There are multiple free wireframe generators available on the web.

Before digital, there was the analogue understanding.  A wireframe was what you drew when you were laying out the geometry of a three dimensional drawing.  At time these were called hash lines.  Or it was called the underdrawing.  Planes were depicted by single lines, and this served as the framework from what you then built up your representational view from.  (It is interesting to note that neither Ching nor Lauseau include the word wireframe in their index.)  So for both analogue and digital, the wireframe was the basic geometry from which the more realistic representational elements are overlaid.

So, yes, both the digital and analogue wireframes can be transparent.  Yet this transparent depiction is used only as a framework to proceed to representation.  The goal of any wireframe, analogue or digital, is to serve as the basis for Representational Spacetime thru the inevitable introduction of opacity.  And please remember we are only entertaining the digital wireframe as a courtesy for this discussion.  The digital wireframe is not a drawing.  It is a draughter.

I included the draughter below, done by me, to demonstrate that a)I can do a digital wireframe and b)this contains far less knowledge than if it were a drawing.  The act of constructing a wireframe is completely removed from the object that you are inputting.  Nearly every wireframe is first input by an element with a minimum of two points (commonly called a line), and then that line is extruded via a dialogue box into the Z dimension.  Or some basic shape is modified in a spacetime that is external to the spacetime that the object exists in.  That method is so far removed from the knowledgeable act of drawing that it is not even on the same planet.

What your goals are and why you are drawing in the first place.  Why Are You Drawing?  Transparent Drawing, at the core, is a change in mindset.  If you are using a pencil to lay out a wireframe as the framework for a representation, you are not thinking holistically.  You are only interested in figuring out what is in front and what is in back, so that when you apply opacity, it will appear as realistic as you can make it.  This purpose, this mindset, this why is the antithesis of Transparent Drawing.

A wireframe has no expression.  It captures nothing of the essence of a subject.  A wireframe can be either transparent or opaque.  Again, does the drawing at the top of this page look anything like a wireframe?

Your mindset, as you draw, is a critically important component to what your drawing ends up doing;  how much work it does.  I hope that by now this is clear.  And that by shedding the strictures and cultural trope of Representational Spacetime, while at the same time opening to other spacetimes,  opens new dimensions to knowledge.  It also increases your enjoyment.  It decreases your worry.  It is the knowledge gained by shifting your mindset, your rules, and your cultural mandates.

Does holistic drawing knowledge always manifest itself into great design?  Does it even catalyze good design?  I hope so.  But the cultural evaluation of what is good and what is bad is not the point.  The point is the holistic knowledge that you internalize when you draw to either understand a subject or to generate a design solution.  The point is the knowledge that you are allowed to put on the paper.  The point is the authenticity.

So for someone to say, well, that Transparent Drawing is nothing more than wireframe drawing, and that can be done by a computer anyway, totally, completely misses the point.  It is possible that by shifting our approach, we can find a new integration of the primal act of drawing.  It is possible that, given the immense shift in our cultural understandings that are ongoing, that we can find a new approach with which to internalize knowledge.