Extended drawing resumes

Unless you write the blog post right away, I've found, it probably won't get done at all. So it is with the final module from last term - I was gathering up all the photos for the three classes, and now it seems so long ago that it's next to impossible to revisit.

During the break I did absolutely no drawing apart from on Tuesdays, and a few chairs ... When you're waiting around, there's usually a chair to draw. (Except that people kept on sitting down in them, and I didn't want to draw any people...)

Last week I had to miss the drawing class, but we had been given a topic for this term and at least I got my thoughts together on that, a bit.

The theme is Territories. Territory in terms of: a physical territory, interior territory, conceptual territory. Aha, my project fits all three: HOME.

The project proposal, distributed before the Easter break, is meant to help our thinking. It asks for:

• Theme (subject, ideas) -  the objects and conditions that make a home
• My plans; methods of working - experimentation and process - research (archive, gathering information, reading, drawing, exploring methods of experimentation) ....blank.......but gradually thoughts accumulate; a nice poem has come my way; and with my computer in place, I feel more "at home"; house plans, a theme from my childhood
• Artist reference/influences (I've been influenced, or hope to be, by the drawing of Lucy Skaer, Sian Bowen, Tania Kovats (and her book Drawing Water), and Sue Lawty)

One of the handouts in the class was this list of research methods (listening to the traffic passing, I'm intrigued by item 4; juxtaposing (item 5) also conjurs up possibilities...) -

1          Drawing  from observation

Drawing as visualisation or from imagination

Drawing as process

2          Constructing:  thinking and responding to ideas in structural form

            Haptic or touch-based response to materials

Constructing models as proposals for drawings

3          Text: as inspiration, text as image, as journal or documentation, as research information

4          Image and sound: still or moving image-based research, plus emotional and/or structural responses to sound

5          Transformation: manual and digital deconstruction techniques

 Changing scale, angle and aspects of content, collaging, juxtaposing

6          Conceptual: testing a pre-selected idea or proposal

            Working with chance or random developments

And this "guiding thought" -

“Drawing is the most direct form of expression yet asserts a very subtle power; it is often an art of absence, a whisper as opposed to a declaration; a suggestion rather than a certitude."

Dr Janet MacKenzie / Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015