My Peer Group Workshop
MA Peer Workshop Draft Proposal Title ‘Television Drawings: Watching the detectives, dancers and deceivers, how emotion and movement affects the drawing experience, are these ‘good’ drawings?’ Introduction and the workshop aims. Stephen Farthing used Michael Craig Martins check list of qualities he felt a good drawing should possess: “spontaneity, creative speculation, experimentation, directness, simplicity, abbreviation, expressiveness, immediacy, personal vision, technical diversity, modesty of means, rawness, fragmentation, discontinuity, unfinishedness and open-endedness.”1 This workshop will investigate how artists with a clearly acknowledged skill in the field of drawing will respond to the challenges of interpreting fast moving imagery containing different emotional content. Drawing requires a decision making process involving the selection of what to draw, the angle to draw it from, what materials to select and what scale to adapt. The students in this peer workshop are to be given some of these choices but selecting what elements to draw from the television programs, is going to be the over riding decision they will have to engage with. Duration: 2hours and 10 minutes Watch selected television excerpts for 5-10 minutes to relax the group into viewing and allow the opportunity to consider how they are to approach the drawing. 2 Drawings of 10 minutes each plus 10-minute discussion. These are short drawings to establish learning to look and see, hand eye co-ordination control, confidence and concentration. In order to establish a speed and language of mark making suited to this challenge. There will be a boundary of being limited to small paper. The artists can now select media and scale or can choose to superimpose onto a previous drawing. 2 drawings of 15 minutes duration plus 10 minute discussion Break Up to 20 minutes 1 Drawing of 20 minutes plus Discussion Put all the drawings out/up for a final critique. Materials: Please bring a combination of media that you individually like to use to interpret your drawing. (I am sorry but wet media, anything you need to dip, is unsuitable for this workshop) I will supply the varied supports for drawing. What is the methodology you need the group to follow? You are going to draw from a selection of varied television programs. Aim to look at this workshop as drawing something that is a new and unfamiliar challenge. This is an enquiry that has no preconceived outcomes. Location: Potentially this will be The Centre for Drawing. Methodology: I need to create a context for looking: by the placing of laptops, TV or a monitor. I need to resolve the technical issues of connecting a television and DVD player that will be viewable by the group, otherwise I will need to limit the group size. (Any other way of streaming the drawing content has been discarded due to the high risks of technical failure during downloading.) In my concerns about the screen sizes view ability by the group, I have ruled out using the lecture theatre, I am aware that altering the screen size could influence the nature of mark making and be more a response to a magnified cinema sized scale, distorting my premise and linkage of my work to manipulation of domestic objects to offer a new appraisal of the familiar. I need to decide the drawing position of the group, using drawing boards, tables or easels. The following will only be available to workshop members on the day: Questions to be considered by the group during the drawing discussions. To use hand-eye synchronicity to capture what you are seeing, your drawing should be a recorded trace of this journey of looking at a television excerpt. Most drawings require look- draw, look- draw. Where you aware of this or have you ‘drawn blind’, or did you feel the need to look at the drawing? Is there a relationship between looking, feeling and responding? Is this distorted in your drawings by the different program content? Is it different drawing movement captured with in a flat screen to drawing an actual physical performance? Are the marks that you made descriptive, visually exciting, do they collectively convey where they originated? Did your concentration strip your other senses of absorbing the program? What information do you retain about the program you watched? Could you hear and understand the vocabulary or were you fully involved in drawing? A drawing is often a two dimensional illusion of an aspect of our three-dimensional world, how does the fact that television reiterates this two-dimensional offering effect your drawings? How do you plan to capture the results? Photograph the drawings. Verbal exchanges in each drawing review will be recorded. I aim to video the group as they make their TV drawings. Document the group’s analysis discussions. Collect all the drawings at the end of the session to re-examine them and investigate further revelations. Document which drawings I found most successful. (All to be returned later) Write up my analysis of my findings.
What do you anticipate the results show? (This will not be disclosed to the group prior to the workshop.) ‘A photograph is static because it has stopped time, a drawing is static, but it encompasses time ‘ John Berger. Will the movement drawings be static? Are the drawings alive, do they communicate movement? Was there a recognized change in pace and movement in the drawings as the artists got used to the methodology? There are an infinite number of marks and media that each artist can select. Was there an individual or group approach? Did they exchange media in later drawings or stick with their original selection? I am presupposing that the peer group will select line drawing as their means of representation? (As I did) Did the subjects alter their usual methodology for these drawings e.g. altering their holding of the drawing implement as the session proceeded? Did I affect the outcomes by controlling the drawing supports? Did any one select colour? What scale did the artists select: did this affect the outcome? Human visual fields can only focus on a small area at one time. We adopt a kind of ‘boot sale scanning’ and fixing on what is of interest. The human looking eye is indiscriminate and it is up to the brain to decide what is focused on and of interest. How does this affect the drawings coverage of the paper when the subject of the drawing is in constant movement? What parts of the paper were filled in; ask: ‘did you think you were filling the paper in response to the filled screen?’ Interpretation between what is expected and the actual marks Is this a satisfying methodology to achieve a mark that could engage the viewer? Would this be a good performative piece for the viewer; watching the artist watching and drawing the television movement? Would the reactions of the artist to a previously unknown TV content be of interest? In this workshop have I demonstrated if differing emotional content impacts on the mark making? Are the workshop outcomes radically different to the mark making that I made in the domestic environment? 1 Michael Craig Martin in an essay for ACE 1994 quoted by Farthing in ’Dirtying The Paper Delicately’, 2005 p25 2 Claude Heath and Lauren Wilson in ‘Drawing Projects: an exploration of the language of drawing’ 2011 p90-96 PEER GROUP WORKSHOP 13th November 2014 ‘Television Drawings: Watching the detectives, dancers and deceivers, how emotion and movement affects the drawing experience, are these ‘good’ drawings?’ Everyone attended and it was a tight squeeze. The excerpts were all played from DVD’s via a television screen replicating my situation when drawing at home.
Introduction and the workshop aims. Initially I read from the provided information sheet Stephen Farthing used Michael Craig Martins check list of qualities he felt a good drawing should possess: “spontaneity, creative speculation, experimentation, directness, simplicity, abbreviation, expressiveness, immediacy, personal vision, technical diversity, modesty of means, rawness, fragmentation, discontinuity, unfinishedness and open-endedness.”1 This workshop will investigate how artists with a clearly acknowledged skill in the field of drawing will respond to the challenges of interpreting fast moving imagery containing different emotional content. Drawing requires a decision making process involving the selection of what to draw, the angle to draw it from, what materials to select and what scale to adapt. The students in this peer workshop are to be given some of these choices but selecting what elements to draw from the television programs, is going to be the over riding decision they will have to engage with. Having introduced the project, I explained and emphasised that they were going to look at this workshop as drawing something that is a new and unfamiliar challenge.This is an enquiry that has no preconceived outcomes. They then viewed a television excerpts for 5 minutes to relax the group into viewing and allow the opportunity to consider how they were to approach the drawings. Drawing 1. 10 minutes The comedy ‘Miranda’, the students were limited to A4 sized paper but were able to select their own media. Drawings 1 and 2 are short drawings to establish learning to look and see, hand eye co-ordination control, confidence and concentration. In order to establish a speed and language of mark making suited to this challenge. Images of the first drawing, everyone constrained by A4 sized paper. Drawing 2. 10 minutes. The artists can now select media and scale or can choose to superimpose onto a previous drawing. Cirque du Soleil ‘Quidam’ Skipping ropes. This clip has a very slow start that then accelerates. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDb-VoyfC0s[/youtube]
it then flowed into ‘Ariel Hoops’ a very rhythmic flowing ariel act .
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lr0_At63RQ[/youtube]
Most people enjoyed the rhythmic movement and accompanying gentle music. Quotes ‘ Certainly something I would never normally watch as far too slow and predictable but perfect for drawing movement.’ ‘I think if I was to draw the acrobats from the television again I would slow down as I rushed thinking something else would happen in which to draw, but it never did.’ At this point I asked the group if they would like to see my concertina TV drawings and we spent a few minutes extending them to their full capacity and discussing the media and method that I employ. Drawing 3. 15 minutes A dark fast paced episode of ‘Dr Who’
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRBQZdBqoOU[/youtube]
Drawing 4. 15 minutes A BBC Docudrama based on the life of Boy George ‘Worried about the Boy’
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAym_aztH3c[/youtube]
The clips were starting to speed up, some students found it hard to keep up their mark making. Some felt frustrated by their inability to draw or capture the story. People maintained strong concentration. Zhou drew with both hands at the same time! Smartie break for the groups choice of 10 minutes. Drawing 5. ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ Chateau fight scene leading into the car chase 20 minutes of continuous action. Intense concentration by the drawers accompanied by noisy mark making, most found the intense action and longer time frame demanding. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRMK2-XaChQ[/youtube] Scale was varied in the long drawing.( I supplied rolls of paper, so the option was open to all students)
‘A photograph is static because it has stopped time, a drawing is static, but it encompasses time ‘ John Berger. There was a consensus that time had moved very fast for the drawers while I felt each section was very slow, the two perspectives like simultaneously viewing both ends of a kaleidoscope. We both experienced the time frame in a very different way. Some were frustrated that they could not draw fast enough, some relished exaggerated mark making on a large scale. They all thought the process dynamic, producing a diversity of work with in a relatively short time frame. There were constant changes in media and colour. Quotes ‘I really couldn’t keep up with the film and found myself not caring about the marks I was making. Fast pace, loud, confusing – eyes beginning to hurt and head beginning to pound. Exhausting to draw and pleased when the film stopped.’ ‘After a while I stopped trying to draw what I saw but concentrated on watching the programme and making automatic marks that reflected the movement. This worked better, and each programme seemed to develop its own character.’ ‘It was a really different experience than drawing from life because my eye seemed to get more confused with the movement on the screen.’ Ines was unusual in selecting to conduct the entire workshop on A4 white paper, she demonstrated a marked transition of drawing style to capture movement. She evolved from look/draw to blind drawing with total focus on the screen. 1st drawing ‘Miranda’ 10 minutes. One of multiple sheets of ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ 20 minutes. The change in Sandy’s scale and mark making during the workshop. This shows her development in communicating movement as drawing.
To use hand-eye synchronicity to capture what you are seeing, your drawing should be a recorded trace of this journey of looking at a television excerpt. Most drawings require look- draw, look- draw. Where you aware of this or have you ‘drawn blind’, or did you feel the need to look at the drawing? The group responded to the task in varied ways, some blind drawing looking only at the screen, while others had a quick glance and then tried to draw that snapshot. This is observable in the video clips.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/116470154[/vimeo]
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/116469943[/vimeo]
The workshop was regarded as an innovative way into mark making and drawing to capture movement. The discussions were difficult to generate, even with the support of a hand out questionaire. We had all had an intensive morning in Tania’s drawing lab and this workshop was tiring but I thought the main issue was caused by our short acquaintance. I realise that we had not yet generated the group trust necessary to speak openly. I often express an opinion immediately as a way to generate a conversation in group critiques, difficult on this occasion as I was in the organisational role.I was able to answer the majority of my queries by observing the group. Would this be a good performative piece for the viewer; watching the artist watching and drawing the television movement? Would the reactions of the artist to a previously unknown TV content be of interest? This was a fascinating process to watch, theatrical in the artists responses to different emotional content.The concentration and atmosphere was quite electric. While the sound of the television was left on, the sound of the drawing sometimes blotted it out, particularly in the final action Matrix section, where attempts were being made to create marks in response to the speed of automatic gun fire. If the viewer became bored watching the drawers there was always the option of watching the programmes! I have since had a lot of verbal positive feedback on the workshop.
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