Extended Drawing - module 6

A mixture of anticipation and dread (just a bit...) on the resumption of the drawing class. What would the project for the next two weeks be?

The short description on the info sheet said "Exploring shape, form and surface. Rubbings", and the first exercise was about space - one's shifting relation to the space of the room. Three drawings, please, 20 minutes each....

Too much scope, thinks I, paralysed into inaction. But ya gotta start somewhere, so I picked up a piece of tissue paper that was drifting around on the floor, and started (don't know why) tracing the marks on the floor -

quite a collection

 I turned my back on the room and worked, abstractedly, on a windowsill -

making it up as I went along. A happy discovery was the blending of chalky pastels in the shapes. An unhappy one was finding gobs of paint from the previous class on my work and fingers (but not clothes, thank goodness).

The shoe prints, of course, represent the human presence in the "room". The various marks represent the absence and eventual return of the painters -

 The floor, with its marks for replacement of easels -

After the break, frottage, and much activity in all parts of the room as we collected marks on acetate and tracing paper -

Week 2 - I came to class with an idea of how to use the rubbings (based on the format of the "suturing" book) and was delighted to see new marks on the floor -

Took a photo of the brushes because "they looked nice", not realising how useful they would be later -

Sue's examples of various ways to take rubbings, eg from folded paper, and with varied directions and pressures of strokes -

The varied strokes didn't work too well for me, as it turned out, but with the knowledge gained I'll try it another time -

At this point I wanted to add "objects" and found some squares of card and a small, flat paintbrush. So the paper got covered in graphite marks, and it came time to do the "inside", in colour. The squares and some sticks, both flat and round, were rubbed hard with chalky pastel and then smeared, adding one at a time -

 That left quite a firm line of colour, and a nice haze.

On the outside I had both rubbed the entire object (paintbrush, stick) and also carefully gone round the edge, to leave whiteness inside the shape.

The room - or rather, the objects it held - became a book, and the book-object became a room - or rather, it held some of what was contained in ... the room? the book? the objects? the making of the book? -

The size of the book-object (A1 folded to A4) makes it quite clunky ...but hey, it's a prototype ...