Michael,
What is the formal problem of drawing research?
Cheers
Phil Sawdon

Quoting Michael Jameson <[log in to unmask]>:

> The St Albans Abbey Big Draw Study Group is looking at the formal problem
> of
> Drawing Research. The first problem is how to ask the right questions.
> Part
> of the answer is to ask each one it in its most direct form. Many such
> questions and answers are in David Hockney's Pictures (Thames and Hudson
> 2004):
> Q1: Why draw?
> p.359: 'I do believe that painting can change the world. If you see the
> world as beautiful, thrilling and mysterious, as I think I do, then you
> feel
> quite alive.'
> p.352: 'I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I
> think
> there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very
> fact
> that the art is made seems to contradict despair.'
> p.138: 'What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to
> something, because of course art is about sharing: you wouldn't be an
> artist
> if you didn't want to share an experience, a thought. I am constantly
> preoccupied with how to remove distance so that we can all come closer
> together, so that we can all begin to sense we are the same, we are one.'
> p.199: 'In art, new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling; you can't
> divorce the two, as, we are now aware, you cannot have time without space
> and space without time.'
> p.209: 'Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people
> fascinate
> me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we
> go
> inside them - is the face. it tells all.'
> p.197: 'It is difficult to say why I decided I wanted to be an artist.
> Obviously, I had some facility, more than other people, but sometimes
> facility comes because one is more interested in looking at things,
> examining them, more interested in the visual world than other people
> are.'
> Q2: How do you depict something?
> p.252: 'I never talk when I'm drawing a person, especially if I'm making
> line drawings. I prefer there to be no noise at all so I can conentrate
> more
> '
> p.230: 'Once my hand has drawn something my eye has observed, I know it
> by
> heart, and I can draw it again without a model.'
> p.68: 'I believe that the problem of how you depict something is a formal
> problem. It's an interesting one and it's a permanent one; there's no
> solution to it. There are a thousand and one ways you can go about it.
> There
> s no set rule.'
> Q3: Why study Drawing and the Drawing Process?
> In the notes on the drawing process, helped by Gregory Evans and David
> Graves, the authors state that the mechanics are inextricable from the
> motives of the artist and the experiences felt by the artist before,
> during
> and after creating that drawing or painting or other work. For example,
> Hockney says, p.149: 'With watercolour, you can't cover up the marks.
> There
> s the story of the construction of the picture, and then the picture
> might
> tell another story as well.'
> Our study group at St Albans was excited by the Macclesfield Psalter
> story in the news this week, because it beautifully illustrates both the
> "Why" and the "How" of medieval Church drawing and the drawing process at
> a time of extremely limited word literacy but extreme yearning by
> ordinary people to see and see, and puzzlement that they were still not
> yet understanding what the drawer(s) were saying and why they were
> saying, and why they were saying it then, and in such beautiful detail to
> such high standards. In a way this also applies to our Abbey murals (and
> graffiti from all ages using our clunchstone pillars!). MJJ