Recap for Thursday, Feb. 5th

Today was the day to discuss our ideas for our first project, and go over it with our group members etc.

My initial idea for the project is to answer the question "What does the viewer's mind see in a drawing?" It's a complex idea that explores exactly what gaps in a drawing the human mind is willing to fill out. An example of this idea is one of the works of the artist Magritte.


The caption in this image says "This is not a pipe." Rather it's a painting of a pipe. The purpose of my drawing will be to explore at what point a viewer makes the connection between a series of marks, and whatever those marks represent. For example, in many animated cartoons, we can see several different ways to represent human faces that is quite different than a realistic drawing of a face. What connections are required to cross that gap between real and unreal? At what point can it no longer be understood what is being seen?

Hopefully these thoughts will guide me to an interesting answer within my drawing project.

Day 3, Thursday Jan 29th

In this class period, I joined a new group for discussion. We discussed the many questions given to us about how we have interacted and been affected by drawing in our life.

It was nice getting to join a new group, because generally they were a tad more excited and constructive than my last one. I found that the discussion of drawing was an interesting way to get to know a lot about people and what they're interested in. While discussing the questions though, we got talking a lot more about our personal tastes and interests and it was actually more beneficial I believe than just focusing on the questions alone.

In my personal response to the questions, I found that I was interested mostly in drawings that have a lot going on. Not so much spastic content, but rather drawings that have a lot of story to them, a lot of content, a lot to be understood, and a lot more to be thought about over time. I was surprised to find that more people thought this same way in my group than I thought would. I discussed how one of my peeves in drawing is when someone has a very plain drawing and they leave it up to the viewer to interpret it. I feel like I'm being short changed in that respect. I can definitely think for myself, but I feel like when the artist gives me nothing to work with, that I can't gain anything from it. When a thoughtful artist presents me with something new that I never conceived before in my mind, that's when I'm truly entertained.

Lastly, everyone in my group felt they'd like to see drawing return to a point where it can be respected on many levels and treated like the entirely serious work it is, no matter what level it is working on.

Review of second day

In class on Jan. 27th we spoke in groups about the meaning of drawing, and what made a drawing successful. We started out with very loose definitions of drawing to the point where we found it difficult to even get a grasp on what we were talking about. While we all favored the idea of loose definition that would not limit the potential of and artist's ideas, we came up with this definition in order to create a framework from which we could further deviate.

Drawing is the skill of using a mark/marks to create a composition.

Now you could get into a similar discussion about the definition of composition, but we felt with this definition, it provided a structural base that could offer opportunities for hidden potential. An example of this would be asking "what defines the mark?" With the potential behind using any sort of mark one could conceive, an artists approach to drawing is actually quite free.

In my interpretation of "found drawing", I had a small amount of trouble trying to decide what it meant. For many others in the class, they understood there were no limits in what they could find. I specifically looked for situations in which I saw a relationship that spoke to my mind as canvas vs. media. In some of the more loose images, I defined this as the positive addition of several windmills against a seemingly empty sky. Likewise, I chose as one of my 2 more successful images, a waterfall which encompassed the idea of water as a media being drawn against the canvas of earth.

I also selected an image of paint peeling off of the wood of a cabinet. This idea was interesting to me because in a way it symbolized the creation of a new drawing from the deterioration and removal of an aging media.
While these two images may not be the best photographed, or most striking of the images on my flickr, I think they were the most interesting conceptually when it comes to my idea of the assignment. That said, looking at the choices of the other students has given me ideas on how I would approach this differently if it were assigned again.

Flickr is up

My Flickr account name is Akibaboy65 so have a look at what I got so far
http://www.flickr.com/photos/akibaboy65