Know what P3 is? It’s ?Paper, Person, Perception. The holy trinity of drawing. It’s because drawing is never one sided and it’s something people tend to forget all too easily.  Y’see, the process of drawing actually comprises a trinity. We usually assume there is just one entity involved, ‘I’.

‘Knowing’ Something

This view is what gets in the way of most people who are new to drawing. Assuming that you control everything takes the focus away from the drawing and into the region of your knowledge of it. Quite simply because your knowledge of the world is pretty much always limited (Yet feels complete, otherwise the system would break down. This is why the ‘mind’ fills in even large gaps of non-knowing with a sense of completion. A sense that we know what the thing is.

Take for instance the vedic metaphor of the rope in darkness which is mistaken for a snake. The reason we assume that the rope is a snake is because the question ‘what is it’ cannot go unresolved. The system has to close the loop or suffer breakdown. So, the mind at any time ‘feels’ like it completely knows the subject, even though it probably knows very little. This is a natural function of the brain. Very important. (This human function is why arguments and debates exist.) Another thing! The older a person gets, the stronger this belief in knowing a particular subject, until the subject itself becomes a firm nugget, a symbol of the thing. After this point, any time someone brings up the subject, this symbol replaces it, and we stop learning. Knowing gets in the way.

Emptying the Cup

Drawing is an effective way to re-open the loop and introduce new information into the system. The first mistake most beginners commit is to draw what they know. You can instantly see that eyes are like fish, and heads are circle. Trees are sticks with a puff of leaves. Everything we see has turned into symbols. To decode it it is important to learn about the Trinity.

The Trinity.

The trinity involves the Medium (Paper, Pencils etc.) the Subject (What you’re drawing) and You. Try this. First take some very rough handmade paper, and a ball point pen. Draw a landscape for about 15 minutes. Now switch to a smooth paper and see how long it takes you to regulate pressure and movement to the new surface. What has happened is that the previous paper has primed you to respond to it. Now try a brush and see how long it takes to adapt to it. Quite simply it’s give and take. The material affects you just as much as you effect it.

Next up is the subject. Stop seeing it as a thing. (Try renaming it. I’m drawing a Mwaashgorg!) It’s not a tree. It’s a wondrous structure with a unique form. Study it’s contour and surface as though you were seeing it for the first time. Stitch together bits of it’s surface as though it were dissection in reverse. I promise you that you will see the subject with new eyes. For example,  this morning I learnt how to tie a cow! I was sketching this cow and as I drew the ropes, I noticed that one strand runs through it’s nose, around the snout, under the chin, over the head and around the neck. See what I mean? So the subject affects you just as much as you observe it.

Next up is you. This is the hard bit. You need to disappear. A friend once told me that as he draws it becomes difficult to breathe. This rapid breathing comes from extreme concentration. A sniper feels this too. So does a martial artist. This is the first step towards the disappearing trick. In plain science, the concentration on the subject requires your consciousness to completely merge with what it is studying. Typical symptoms are losing track of time and when you pull out of it, it’s like you were in a trance. As though you wake up from a refreshing sleep. If you’ve felt this while drawing, you know what I’m talking about.

So there it is folks. The holy trinity of drawing.

I found the Humming Bird image on this site. Kudos to the original artist, wherever you are. The cover image is a triptych by Francis Bacon. Thanks to my favorite Wiki. The cup is stock and the zen image is from MOS. Thanks much.

Comparing Apples to Lightbulbs

This post is about categorisation errors, and about how confusing such fallacies are when applied without thought. Let’s start with a simplified example.

mathematician: Understand Math?
Other guy: Absolutely!
mathematician: What’s 2 x 2
Other guy: 6
mathematician: Um, isn’t that 4?
Other guy: Well, my belief system is different…

The mathematician is obviously refering to simple arithmetic. The other guy however is somewhere else. Not only did he get the sum wrong, he’s gone ahead and botched up the category itself. It’s like comparing apples to lightbulbs. Confounding and frustrating. What does one do when someone’s personal ‘take’ is the rejoinder to simple documented fact?

You probably recognise encounters like this in everyday life. What’s particularly frustrating about such discussions is that inarticulate and ambigious feelings are presented in the face of logic or fact. The evolutionist VS Intelligent design debates are similar as well, and anyone who’s watched the Dawkins VS Lennox session knows how frustrating categorisation errors are.

Art and Illustration

This post is about an anecdote that I heard from an artist friend. The artist recently organised an exhibition of her work and visited a well known art curator for feedback. The curator apparently told her that she should quit ART and take up Illustration.

Spotted the categorisation error yet? No?

Art relates to a specific artefact, one that goes beyond the regular confines of it’s utility and is defined by meaning instead. It is inseperable from the artist and often acts as a surrogate or a totem of it’s creator. One cannot choose to create ART because the artist can never claim that it is so. Theodor Adorno puts it nicely when he says “It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident.”

While classificatory disputes on art are as old as the history of art itself, what the curator is surreptitiously referring to is George Dickie’s Institutional theory of art. Dickie defines it as that “which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting in behalf of a certain social institution” in this case, the so called art-world.

The art-world is a sort of group of insiders comprising of people such as critics, art historians, curators, institutions, collectors and art investors. According to Dickie, this alone actually confers the status of Art to an artefact.

While Dickie may have contributed his definition in an effort to bell the cat, he himself got his cue from Arthur Danto who was more straightforward and more importantly, honest! “To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry—an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.”

The curator is implying two different things here…
1. That he belongs to the artworld, and as such posseses Danto’s something that the eye cannot descry.
2. That paintings may contain a universal – an art’ness if you will. Something that makes an artefact art by it’s very existence.

The Art’ness in Art

It is almost as if the curator is using Platonic forms to suggest the non-artness of the work. In Pluto’s words, “We must then possess knowledge of the Equal before that time when we first saw the equal objects and realized that all these objects strive to be like the Equal but are deficient in this.”  As though there were an ‘art’ness to art, and that some work possessed that ‘art’ness, while others didn’t. It is note worthy that his own role though in art-stamping is brandished but never itself posited as the reason behind a work not being up to some lofty standard of art. Rather, the curator implies that the work does not carry a pre-determined art’ness to it.

Quite surprisingly this view is widely held and never questioned, as though it were an answer in itself. Statements like, “But, is it art?”, “Does it have it?” reflect the sense that some gifted individuals do posses this mysterious ability to sniff out the inherent art’ness in a painting. If it ‘has it’, that is. This confusion is apparent within the artworld as artists attempt gimmicks, lofty and profound monikers, witticisms and other idiocy, trying to isolate this mysterious quality (art’ness) that will transform their work to art.

We also run into the intention problem here. The classic other minds problem. The curator has no way of peeking into the artist’s mind to see the process that resulted in the work of art, and ergo assumes that it is literally what it depicts, or worse anchors the work within his own framework.

So, is it art then?

So, art (unfortunately) is mysterious accordance by the art-world while illustration is an activity that results in made to order work. The exhibition itself is clearly a sign that the work displayed is not illustration. (This is denoted by the context, remember, not by the work itself.) The other clue to why this is not illustration is the fact that the artist herself belongs to Danto’s artworld by virtue of her chosen role,her intention. – Fine Art.

Confusing an artist with an illustrator (some illustrators are artists, but artists are not illustrators) is hardly becoming of an insider such as the curator and his comment is made worse by the implication that my artist friend is an outsider. (to the artworld!) I’m happy if this was merely an error, because knowledge can always be augmented. On the other hand, if this was simply an attempt at condescension, then I recommend  what Manet told Cezzane he did to a wag – a saber through the shoulder.

The question was, why do we draw?

George’s reply was enlightening:

“… Why this urgency to convey our subjective experiences? Writers, artists, musicians are all engaged in this activity, so it’s not simply a one off thing. The attempt to turn subjective experiences into tangible reality is a natural process of being human….”

Why, then we should be drawing all the time! George explains why we don’t:

“… As a young ‘un your inner, subjective experiences tend to be raw and powerful (Remember your first love, first breakup, first birthday gift etc…) These are often channelised through activity such as poetry, art or in some cases in adverse ways such as violence or depression. You probably sketched a lot when you were younger because many aspects of life were new. As you grow older you develop stock reactions to life’s situations, shorter, snappier, seemingly more efficient ways. A breakup is familiar territory and new love doesn’t quite feel the same…. “

Which is why music, depression, chocolate, caffeine, alcohol, absinthe (am thinking of Marilyn Manson, who has Mansinthe to his credit!), shrooms, shoes, shopping, puppy dogs and other exciting stuff help a whole lot in heightening a dimension of emotion to a level potent enough to pin down a subjective experience as an objective work of art.

Even J K Rowling’s epic-in-seven-parts talks about some aspects of this kind of emotional channeling and their uses. Wizards can produce a Patronus they concentrate upon a happy memory (with all their might), which protect them against Dementors, the very epitome of weepiness and depression. A Boggart is a magical creature who takes the form of your very worst fear when it confronts you, becoming concrete and objectified in front of children, whose fears are simpler (spiders, snakes!) as opposed to forms that are more complex (the moon, scenes of death?) for adults.

George mentions in his post that as we evolve and survive, we develop language to help describe experiences, and develop stock reactions to common or recurring occurrences (breakups, brushing teeth et al). However as grown ups (groan ups!) our internal emotional state is increasingly complex with “hopes and dreams” and “vague fears hard to describe”.  Interestingly, children with their simpler inner hopes, dreams and fears (“I want a new toy car!”, “I hate school!”) – might I venture to call these “stock” – have vaguer descriptions of external experiences due to their limited linguistic capability (“It huuurts!”).

The stock reactions that we usually apply in everyday life lead to expressions like “quirky”, “embarassing”, “weird”, “surreal” to describe anything out of the ordinary hum of collective normalcy. The little children who love drawing truly express themselves with flourishes, squiggles, fingerprints, left hands and feet, tongues, toes and walls; relishing the feel of crayons on a surface, the process of drawing. As they grow, their abilities are chanelled into “colour within the lines”, “draw a scenery”, “trees are NOT blue”, “DON’T draw on the wall!” “Architecture entrance exam: draw in perspective for 10 marks!”, a systematic process of creating the equivalent of stock reactions; thus taking away all the undisguised pleasure of “drawing” as a process. Then comes the day when you draw every day for a living, where every drawing is a “job” and a “portfolio piece”; or you “can’t” draw; or haven’t drawn in ages since the computer took over your fingers.

This is when you need to unlearn all that those square systems of education (read stock reaction-conditioners). Its harder than it seems, isn’t it? Which brings me back to that immortal discussion on why we draw. This will hopefully push you a bit on the way to real unlearning.

Draw, draw, draw… like nobody’s watching!

A Chess Metaphor

Perhaps I cannot articulate this properly, so let me use another example. I also see something similar happening when I play chess. Maybe it’s because I am a chess noob, I find myself addicted to watching my opponent making her move. Even when I try and distract myself with something else like reading a book, or drawing (While my opponent is thinking out her move) I find myself drawn to sneak a peek at my opponent moving her pawn. I just have to know which pawn she moved. I suppose this is because I think this added bit of information (knowing her latest move because you saw her moving) is useful. Very often it is not. I have realised that when I manage to immerse myself into something else and find that I do not know her latest move, but I have to locate it (look around at the board until I spot it) I often play better.  I think this is because my brain has to review all the points on the board once again to locate the pawn. In the process, I find that I am also aware of the other options on the board.  If I had seen her latest move, then the chances are that I will probably try and react to that one specifically without knowing my options.

In a tangential way, I find that this notion is similar to the one about people looking at my drawings. It pulls me out of my immersion and I find myself localising on one spot of the drawing and pretty soon the overall drawing is messed up. In a sense I have lost sight of the territory because I tried to specify a map.

Learning Forgetfulness – An Experiment

I read about a Rinzen monk who was an inventor. He was apparently accomplished at many different things including grinding lenses for telescopes, or building small machines that would hover etc. The story goes that he would immediately destroy whatever he designed or built. I was intrigued by this and for several months would tear up my drawings the moment I finished them. Sometimes I would keep drawing until many have accumulated, then I would destroy them wholesale.

Sometimes, I would pity an exceptional drawing, and try to reason why it should be saved, but ultimately it too would be torn up. Over a period of time this silly exercise actually helped with something. I think that it is important to forget. Our schools and colleges, parents and well meaning elders have drummed it into us that we are volitive creatures who have to respond to causality. This is why we plan and scheme and try to control everything in our lives. This is why remembrance is so important to us.

But sometimes remembrance leads to habituation which becomes embedded the longer we live with it. My poor learning of anatomy through reference points in my early years has atrophied my anatomical drawings. Now I don’t draw human beings, I construct them! it may take me years to break this habit (but happily, now that it has registered, it has to go). I can see similar habituation problems in all my friends, even those that I consider masters. What this probably means is that no one is safe, and even a single moment of non-mindfulness can create an impression that grows that longer it stays with you. (Sanskrit vasana-mayah? is translated as desires. In this context look at Vasana as an impression. The oldest vasanas are the most difficult to get rid of. More recent ones are easier to erase.)

The art of watchful-forgetfulness (what else can I call it?) certainly helps with keeping a fluid mind. The ancients typically referred to it as running water (nothing accrues) or contradictorily also as still water (perfect stillness). Another metaphor commonly used is a lotus flower because it blooms in the dirtiest pools without the slime actually dirtying it. The lotus accrues no habituation.

If that made any sense at all, go ding! with a comment. If not, let it slide. Just forget it.

More information

Vasana: A more traditional and scholarly interpretation of Vasanas by Wikipedia. However people who are perceptive of their own will find that this description doesn’t capture the notion because they’re casting a very wide net I think. I invite anyone who may have perceived this rather subtle aspect of the mind to contribute a description. (Ash?)

Here is a peek at what the artists are up to in the community:

1. The weekend Sketch Club

This is Pencil Jam’s main feature. We meet every weekend to sketch our city, and members get to meet each other in person. This is the space where we exchange techniques and teach each other. Stay updated about our sketch club here…

2. Daily Sketch Assignments

The daily sketch assignment is very different from our weekend sketches where we study from life. The daily drawing assignments are typically drawn from imagination or visual reference and within a strict framework of medium used. Join the group if you’d like to build the discipline to daily drawing.

3. Member Mix – Sketch Challenges

This is a great activity to pit yourself against other members of the community. The system randomly pairs you against someone and you get to challenge them with a drawing theme. Draw, and see what you can learn from the other one’s work. Applications are by enrolment. Try it out now.

4. Critiques and Feedback

We have set up a specific group to help members get feedback on their work. Our community features a lot of talented and professional artists. This is a great way to learn from some absolute masters. just put up your work and ask for specific feedback. Do it now!

5. Video Demonstration of Techniques

Members have uploaded or linked to tons of videos showing drawing and painting techniques. This is a great way to learn and polish your skills. The video’s have been tagged under specific headings making them easy to browse. Here are just a few categories…

• Anatomy
• Still Life
• Perspective
• Watercolour

5. A Swap Board

Yup. We even have a swap board where community members can swap or sell drawing books, material or what have you! If you have an old wacom or easel and want to exchange it for a bunch of art books, this is the place. Go swap something!

There are of course the other great features you have come to expect from social communities. Members can blog, or upload their work portfolios within the community. In short this community has everything that you need to improve your drawing skills. If you’ve been under utilising it, go participate now.

RSVP to the event here…

So if you followed the 2 previous posts you noticed that we keep mentioning that the sketch is more evocative than the photograph. Why should this be the case? Is there a further explanation beyond the fact that photographs freeze frame the situation in precise detail, or that it is because the artist took the time to draw the sketch and as such participated in the scenario – the subject of the sketch.

Let’s explore this.

When we say capturing the temporal aspect in drawing, we are led to examine the role of Time. Anyone who follows science understands that space-time or time and space is better uttered together, since they are like the two sides of a coin. I illustrate this in my drawing classes by asking the students to guess what is behind the vase or jar that they are drawing. Most students say “the other side of the Jar of course, which is like the side we are seeing.”

This is of course inference. and memory, from encountering objects such as these before. The memory is an encapsulated symbol which sort of gathers both space data and time data (The time that it took to go around and see the other side of the Jar) and forms one consolidated image of the whole thing – A Jar! Therefore to appreciate the idea of space, one needs to consider time as part and parcel of space itself.

Photographs are very much like these snapshots of memory. They include both the temporal aspect as well as the visual objects in the scenario. The amount of detail in them freeze frames these moments and encapsulates them. Drawings on the other hand function very differently. Let’s take a look.

With drawings the artist has put in a lot more time in the drawing process (as opposed to the camera’s recording process, temporarily suspending the role of the photographer.) and along with the subject the artist is also manipulating the quality of the line. There are several different data points being generated here.

1. The time that the artist spends in delineating the subject
2. The quality of the line that the artist chooses
3. The conditions under which the artist draws
4. The points on the drawing that the artist considers key focal points
5. The stylisation which depicts the mood of the artist (as well as the chronological point in his history when he drew it)

etc. I’m sure there may be many more data points that become apparent the more that I explore it. In essence, a sketch seems to pack in a lot more data than a photograph can, though the meaning is more evident to the artist himself than to an external observer.

Further more, an artist captures time through a suggestion of movement. Photographs too have motion blur, but these function differently. A motion blur is again a frozen moment in an even more finely diced timeline. But motion in a sketch is just an indication of that. That the subject is capable of or is in motion. The lines here are an addition. A symbol of motion, as opposed to a photograph’s motion blur.

Upon further introspection, I think this is how I break this down.

The artist by his choice of lines to depict the subject is also simultaneously choosing symbols that convey specific meaning. For instance in a given speed sketch of a person, specific lines are key in conveying – gravity, posture, age, gender, emotional disposition (body language) etc. When composited as a whole and seen in the light of stylisation, the overall sketch can have a terrible amount of meaning! All of these aspects are intrinsic to time, since understanding them requires one to hold specific images for an extended duration of time.

Example:  I know that George Supreeth is a chain smoking megalomaniac because I have observed him act of smoking over an extended duration alongside his repeated claims for world domination.

This is why I think that sketches are capable of capturing time. Not just in it’s depiction of motion, but also by the fact that the drawing was made at all.

Danny Gregory, compulsive drawer and constant observer, compiled this book called “An Illustrated Life“, which found its way to my desk one day. It’s a book compiled by one sketchbook-er about other sketchbook-ers to other aspiring or actual sketchbook-ers. Gregory’s artists talk about their sketchbooks and sketchbook-keeping habits and tendencies, and show you selected pages of their books that you can drool and leave puddles over. It is a beautiful book, it is so because of the myriad of disconnected, but colourful thoughts, ideas and images you see in it.

It also makes me think.

About empathy. Why do we love looking at a sketchbook?  Its because we take in the image on a sketchbook page, and empathise with the event shown, we feel it, we understand it, we put ourselves in the artist’s shoes – the ones he wore when he made that sketch, smelly though they might have been. And it is the exact thing that makes you draw or want to draw when you see that page.

About photography. Why does George say that “a sketchbook is more evocative than a photograph” ? (It most certainly is. I can vouch for that because I’ve almost completely replaced photography with sketching during trips and life and portraiture and stuff, these days.) The added quality that makes a sketchbook page more evocative than a photograph is perhaps the time that the artist took to draw his subject, which means he has observed every line and patch of light or shade he drew, and in that sense saw his object more closely, more carefully than the relatively cursory glance of a camera’s blinkety lens. Another factor could be the uniqueness of the sketch, borne out of the artist’s unique eye and hand and brain; meaning nobody would be able to represent the scene quite like this particular artist. Of course, the artist himself would never make an identical sketch twice. While photography captures several thousands of pictures per event, to make sure the so-called perfect shot may be obtained, the lone sketch is the only shot and it has to be perfect. The time taken to flick through the hundreds of pictures of a scene, could altogether be way less than the time one takes to look closely at every detail of a sketch of the same thing. Further, artists often write stuff on the sketch, notes, comments, stories, descriptions, meaningless words, sometimes; but that’s one thing a photographer can’t do with just his camera.

Don’t get me wrong, I love photography and would still take a lot of pictures if I had my camera near me (its miles away in Goa.) There’s much we can learn from it, especially about composition, light and shade, and about omnipresence. A sketchbook, to me, is just a little bit more personal, more special. I will contradict myself in the next few lines.

About people. Back to Danny Gregory’s An Illustrated Life. The subhead on the cover says “drawing inspiration from the private sketchbooks of artists, illustrators and designers”. Some artists specifically mention that they “don’t mind other people looking at their sketchbooks” or “used to be self-conscious while drawing in public”. Others regularly upload a daily sketch on their blogs and even have a dedicated sketchbook section on their website (I do). It feels like a weird kind of striptease. On the one hand we call it a “private” or “personal” sketchbook, and on the other we are all raring to go reveal it to everyone around us. We love hearing about howpeople make their sketchbooks. We vampirically devour every little detail. So would it be even possible to maintain a “showy” sketchbook – beautiful expensive Moleskine of droolworthy watercolour sketches, and a “crappy” sketchbook (like France Belleville says in the book) – full of doodley drawings? For at what point does even a crappy sketchbook become one that you begin to display coyly to excited viewers, or call half-finished drawings works-in-progress on your “sketchbook” link in your website? I think its a wiggly, bleedy grey area, that point. We all need our egos fed some sugar from time to time. =)

Anyway. The vampire has spoken. Get a look at An Illustrated Life. Go draw in that there sketchbook.

1. When I sketch, I turn my book around a lot. So sketches are at multiple angles on a single page.

I noticed I do this a lot. Perhaps it’s because I don’t want the lines from the previous sketch to bias the current one. It also helps me to ‘free myself’ from the previous image. Also it allows me to use bits of white space on the page. Finally the overall ‘accidental’ composition of sketches on the page sparks off an idea for a full composition on it’s own.

2. I am concious that someone’s going to look at the sketchbook later

I often find myself concious that someone is going to look at my sketchbook later. So while i’m drawing I find myself studying my subject less and prettying the drawing more. I also find myself trying to maintain a pretty sketchbook. I tried to break this habit by not using bound books but loose leafs and immediately destroying the drawings after I was done with them. That helps a bit, but the problem still crops up from time to time.

3.  I use both sides of the sketchbook simultaneously

In a previous avatar, I was an information architect. It fed my penchant for structured information. Now that’s creeping into my sketchbooks too. I tend to use both sides of the book. For instance the current sketchbook has nature studies and general sketches. My nature studies are of plants, birds, seeds etc and start from one end of the book. The general sketches that I draw everyday start on the other end.

4. Sketchbooks are more evocative than photographs

For me sketchbooks are more evocative than photographs. A single page dredges up many images from that moment. I’ve thought about this a lot and I figure that the precise detail in a photograph freezes a moment forever and thats why the memories from a photograph are very precise. Like a checklist. A sketchbook on the other hand because of it’s indefinite structures requires the brain to create more information. This makes for colourful and vivid memories.

5. Sketchbooks are the best place to discover new techniques

I’ve seen that sketchbooks are the best place to discover new techniques. Not only that it gets documented and archived, but also for the fact that sketchbooks are the place that I loosen up the most. On a professional project I am wary of using experimental techniques, but give me a sketchbook to blow paint around on anyday!

So that was a bit of a ramble, no? That’s my little ditty on sketchbooks.

Want to read a really great post on sketchbooks? Read Prabha’s what sketchbooks are for.