Hi Peter

just scanned through all the other worthwhile to read replies here to 
the digital question, and just to assure you that the drawing network 
in my opinion is not anti-digital - there was a whole email devoted to 
give feedback on digital drawing from the Drawing Research Network 
conference in Loughborough. If you didn't get that, than maybe one of 
us from the network should forward it to you - it was a summary on one 
of the afternoon speakers who devoted the topic to digital drawing (I 
have a look to see if I still got it and forward it to you).

There is little I can add to all the interesting contributions people 
have already made. I am kind of a luddite myself, or always thought I 
was, but there is something so pervasive about digital technology that 
it is almost impossible to remain luddite. So I use digital for 
networking (hence here!), for marketing and promotion and for 'tarting 
up' my documentation.

I think the phenomenological take Spike is taking in the email below is 
indicative of the need for many (if not most of us?)  to keep grounded 
and connected with real physical and real time experiences. I 
personally believe in maintaining the difference between simulation and 
real, though I am sure this can and will be contested by some, 
philosophers and scientist and/or drawing research network members. For 
me it makes sense quite literally to hang on to such a way of 
describing the difference between digital and analogue. This need not 
mean that the two are aposite or not reconcilable. I found out for 
example, that in the student cohort at Ulster students one would expect 
to be working with a preference for digital (photo/ video time based 
students), would try and bring their practice "back" into real time and 
making experiences, including a return to non-digital film (allegedly - 
so one of their tutors assures me). Whereas when I asked one of our 
most painterly painters in year 3 if he had any skills in photoshop 
(whose canvases are action ridden, covered in paint and splashes and 
rich textural hand made surfaces applied in layers of real time), he 
surprised me by replying that he used photoshop quite a lot to work out 
different colour combinations and compositions prior to bringing these 
'short cuts' back into real paint...

So things are not so predictable. I think the two practices analogue 
and digital drawing can feed each other, and perhaps for some the 
digital shapes the outcome, whereas for others the digital is only a 
means towards an analogue end -  so to say. Having rumbled on about 
those two terms, I don't really like the term analogue for non-digital 
drawing -  so apologies for having used it!

Welcome to the drawing network !


Doris Rohr
Associate Lecturer Painting
FIne and Applied Art
University of Ulster
School of Art and Design
Belfast Campus
York Street
Belfast
BT15 1ED

http://www.ulster.ac.uk
[log in to unmask]


On 22 Nov 2008, at 23:15, Thomas, Peter wrote:

> Hi Spike,
>  
> There are lots of us out here who use not just specialist mice but 
> also pressure sensitive graphics pens. We have favourite software, 
> brushes, pens, and even can be extremely particular about the texture 
> and size of the tablet we draw on.
> Graphics tablets and a good range of drawing software have been around 
> for many years now.
>  
> There are some effects which are better created using ‘real’ 
> watercolour, oil, acrylics on canvass, and pens on board, paper or 
> other media. I don’t think its helpful to label people who draw using 
> a computer as photoshop perfectionists just as its not fair to label 
> by-hand workers  as water colour blot makers or whatever.
>  
> I just joined this drawing research network yesterday because I draw 
> and I’m interested in drawing. If this is a kind of anti-computer 
> network please let me know and I will seek out that unsubscribe 
> button.
>  
> I don’t think you need to worry about the industrial revolution in 
> England anymore.
>  
> Regards,
> Peter
>  
> From: The UK drawing research network mailing list 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jill Gibbon
> Sent: 22 November 2008 14:38
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Fwd: why has there been a swing back to drawing?
>  
> Thanks Spike - "drawing cuts back on gloss of media glamour"  I so 
> agree!
>  
>
> From: Rachel & Spike <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Saturday, 22 November, 2008 12:13:50
> Subject: Re: Fwd: why has there been a swing back to drawing?
>
>  Hello Becky, my own naive and hopeful view is that drawing places us 
> in connection with ourselves fully, here in the life-world.
>
>  Instead of the virtual distance we don't necessarily 'experience' but 
> co-join in absence (that very technology that refines through 
> developed 'etch-a-sketch'-ese within which we do not develop ourselves 
> but follow a doctrined path), we actualise a freedom of thought 
> through embodied mark making.
>
>  This is very much Jean Baudrillard i realise but i feel it's true and 
> more important now than ever.
>
>  Glamour is too easy for those of intellect who have some experience. 
> Any basic novice could take a photograph of someone real and through a 
> few easy steps, refine it on photoshop to make it appear glamourous 
> and fitting that thin veil called 'beautiful'. The inhuman brush of 
> media can clean away blemishes, brighten the eyes, enhance and richen 
> colour, lift eye lids, over-define lashes, balance or make more 
> symmetrical, etc etc. Is this what we strive for through art?
>
>  I think drawing cuts back on gloss of media glamour, it defines human 
> reaction and modification - searching and finding - but it also leaves 
> its traces of definition and correction and screams nuance. Drawing is 
> a language which utilises pressure as well as arc of elbow, turn of 
> wrist etc. Graphically, before a real drawing, we can intuit feeling 
> and passion, this is the very language which is bleached away on a 
> computer screen. This is the very thing which eludes today's multi 
> media 'perfected/corrected' images, depth itself, human contact of 
> emotion, experience and presence.
>
>  The computer is for me nothing but the whiteness of the paper i wish 
> to destroy with the placing of a presence there. A scan of one brush 
> mark does not convey the essence of that brushstroke, it conveys an 
> appearance which is registered by a machine and translated into a 
> separate language of 0's and 1's and thereore diminished. Like 
> converting Shakespeare's language into Telly Tubby language. We don't 
> feel the flow of the medium or the tease of the brush, we can pick up 
> on the groove created in the paper by the force of the pencil.
>
>  If you excuse the lewdness, i guess it's the same as the difference 
> between having real sex and looking at porn.
>
>  :)
>
>  Just a luddite opinion.
>
>  Spike.
>