Course manual: “Aim: This project is in some ways the antithesis of the previous one. Last time, you used an object to draw ‘for’ you; this time you’ll allow your own emotional responses to direct your physical mark-making.
Method: Take 10 pieces of card and give them to friends. Ask them to write down a characteristic of someone in a novel or newspaper article in the first person. Ask them to choose something which might engender an emotional or physical response. Examples might be ‘I killed 15 women’ or ‘I won the lottery’ or ‘I feel nervous at parties’.Ask someone to sit for you as a model. Every 10 minutes ask them to read from one of the cards. As they read the statement out, try to change the way you use your materials to respond to the statement. Make angry, scared, joyful marks as prompted.
I used this project as a quarantine game for the family again, so all agree to write some of the cards containing statements engendering an emotional response.
I start by trying out different marks as a response to different emotions in my A4 sketchbook. I am not using the cards yet- I do not want to spoil my first reaction to them by having read them before drawing the model.
These are marks in answer to sad, angry, happy, dreamy, elated, furious, scared, claustrophobic etc:
I have decided to stay monochrome and only use grey or black materials, to really let the marks be the focus, not any colours.
Today Tom has agreed to sit for me (while listening to a podcast). I prepare an A2 sheet of paper on a board and graphite pencils in different grades, charcoal sticks, some Indian ink and different brushes and an array of black markers.
The first 10 minute card that he pulls out reads: “I sometimes wish I had never been born at all”.
I can feel tears here and decide to start with ink and water that I can let run down over the face like tears, using a rather small brush, like a not so loud voice. So this is how the drawing starts:
I think the defeated and teary look caught the emotion of the statement.
Next card reads: ” I am wood”.
For this card, I use a 7B pencil, wanting to touch the wood of the pencil and letting my marks be both soft and hard as if feeling the surface of wood. My pencil is moving as if sanding the surface.
Close- ups:
Third card: “I like to eat the birds” (What??) I do not know what I am feeling here, it is very confusing. There is a strange spiraling of thoughts here, so I decide to capture that spiraling motion. I choose a black 01 marker.
A closer look:
Fourth card: “I wish someone would love me”. For this statement, I feel deep sadness again, and it is a quiet voice. I choose a thinner black marker and make very tight, tense, small marks:
Fifth card: “It is time for me to revolt”
It is time to take a thick charcoal stick and move in strong, revolting, angular, decisive marks:
I let the figure raise the arms and straighten up the shoulders from the slumped position, also there is a new decisive trait over the eyes.
Having arrived here, I decide that this drawing is complete and decide to start on a new A2 paper for the next 5 cards with statements.
Card number 1: “I say- hey fuckface- this ebook will change your life in like 5 minutes or something” (Seriously, family?)
This statement feels very arrogant. I respond by grabbing a nr 1 black marker and make bold, big, sweeping marks with my nose held high.
This looks rather terrible and has no likeness at all to my sitter.
Card nr 2: “I am stuck in mental traffic”
This is definitely a subtler, swirling, spiraling mark. I use a 0,5 technical graphite pencil for very intricate swirling, repetitive marks, leaving the figure and spinning around the head.
This is the drawing at this stage:
Third card: “I will shoot anyone who breaks quarantine” (actually said by Philippine President Duterte).
I am relieved at finding such a strong, hard statement that I can respond to with a thick brush loaded with Indian ink in strong, hard strokes- just what this drawing needs.
This arranged the shape of the figure and brought back a certain slight likeness.
Fourth card: “I think everything will be ok.”
For this soothing and calming feeling, I go back to a graphite pencil, in 9B for a darker mark. I use more classical cross hatching as my marks, for a certain feeling of familiarity.
The fifth and last card: “I lost myself between your legs.” I almost feel like I should grab some flesh-coloured pastels here, but decide to stay with my monochrome idea and instead add water with a thin brush, letting very diluted ink flow down the background and figure.
This is the final drawing:
This was a really interesting exercise in pushing my mark-making further and especially in translating an emotional response into a physical one. It depended quite strongly on the statements how accurately it felt that I could translate them. The clearer the emotional response, the easier it was to turn the feeling into physical mark making.
I think both drawings show a wide range of emotional responses and different marks, but I think the second one feels more coherent as a portrait of the sitter AND as a translation of the statements.
Course manual: “Aim: Push the concept of marks as a tracery of movement to its logical conclusion by making marks incidental to your own movement.
Method: Find something which moves and attach a drawing medium to it so that it creates a drawing by itself. You might use a remote control car, a clock face, a door which is opened regularly, the foot of a dancer. Develop these automatic drawings using source material from your sketchbook or simply by responding to what you find as you experiment. Note carefully what happens when you shift the drawing from automatically produced marks to considered ones.”
LINE IN THE WIND
I am observing a bed sheet flapping on the clothesline in the wind, and decide to try a first “drawing machine” experiment there.
As the wind is quite strong, a charcoal stick or a pencil are too light- they would just fly around. I attach a stick to a string and dip the end in Indian ink. I attach a Canson A2 paper between two bricks.
I am really pleased with the variety of marks and shapes the stick is drawing.
The ink dries in the wind, so I have to dip the point in ink a few times.
This is the point where I decide that the drawing is finished:
I see a delicate flower and am really happy with this first drawing machine drawing.
For a second drawing, I add another stick, which I dip in W&N Vermellion ink, besides the first stick with Indian ink:
This is the result:
It is more chaotic than the drawing with only one stick, but I am pleased at the result. It has a clear center and the composition is held up by the accidental red dot on the left.
PLANT IN THE WIND
I decide to complicate the drawings further by attaching four thin markers- three black and one orange- to a small plant that is waving wildly in the wind.
I am really quite fascinated by the marks and patterns created. When the markers stop, as if reflecting where to swing next, they leave a stronger dot.
This is plant drawing number one:
It looks like a complicated constellation or map- I really like what came out of this.
I try this a second time, and add the stick dipped in ink for a short moment in the end- to create different values to the marks:
WASHING MACHINE
Our washing machine has a whole life of its own during the spinning cycle, so I decide to explore this as a drawing machine.
I suspend a row of coloured pencils and oil pastels, all in different blue shades, over the machine.
Although the machine has moved a good 20 cm forwards during the cycle, there are hardly any marks on the paper. The drawing materials are too light and make too faint a mark. I decide to repeat the experiment with coloured markers instead:
This time the result is more exciting:
As a drawing, I am less fascinated by it than by the more harmonious wind drawings both from the clothesline and from the little plant. The marks form less of a coherence here, but there are some interesting, almost cartoon figures within the lines.
THE BLENDER
Watching the blender shudder and swirl, I have another drawing tool.
Here I am using a thin paper roll from IKEA that can easily be bent and formed in the shape of the blender.
I first start by using some left overs of charcoal sticks that I simply throw in and start:
I am not sure what I was expecting, but the result is disappointing:
Next, I try some diluted Indian ink:
I place the paper on top of the bowl instead of inside, and use the pulse function, swirling the ink up to touch the paper.
These two trials are more interesting than the charcoal one. I need something small and hard to swirl up with the motion and touch the paper though. I decide to add flaxseeds to my ink mixture.
This worked quite well- I like the explosive patterns:
As the paper is thin, it even comes with a texture .
One more attempt:
For a last experiment, I place the paper inside the blender:
This was a fun experiment, and reflects well the explosive force of the blender.
I am still mostly pleased with the four first ones created by the wind. They all have very delicate and intricate patterns with a variety of marks. I choose to continue working on these, seeing a pattern like flightlines over a map.
For the first one, I recreate a map under the lines using watercolour.
The result is too literal, to illustrative. For a next trial, I will only use Payne’s grey and black watercolours- aiming more for a schematic map.
I prefer this result, but I do still not think that the original drawing has improved.
For the last one where I recognize a delicate flower, I will only colour in the background to lift out the lines- again using Payne’s grey watercolour:
Unfortunately, I think all these drawings were more interesting before I started changing them. I liked the variety and “hesitation” of the marks, where they would suddenly change direction, something which I would not use if I was drawing consciously myself.
After my own trials with creating some simple drawing machines, it was really interesting to explore Rebecca Horns’ work.
In her earlier works from the 1970’s, she created sculptural constructions that were most often extensions of her own body, like “Pencilmask” below, or a variety of feather masks.
This Pencilmask still required the artists’ presence and physical movements to leave marks. In that way, Horn explored her own body and limitations or feelings when extended. While wearing these constructs, she could also explore various levels of control and interaction. Some masks, like her “Black Cockfeathers mask” or “Cocatoo mask” were designed to look at and meet another person with the altered vision that these masks would give the wearer, questioning her own views and subjectivity. After severe lung poisoning she spent a year very sick and in isolation. After that a lot of her work deals with interaction. She used a variety of media, but came to fame through these sculptural constructions that were then used in performances and for films.
In “Finger gloves” from 1972, Horn created gloves with really long fingers. She is exploring the limitations of her own body by reaching beyond it, and also exploring the space beyond the own body and the objects she can reach with her constructed fingers.
“I feel myself touching, see myself grasping, and control the distance between myself and the objects.” (Quote and image from Tate website: Tate.2020.Tate, Finger Gloves Rebecca Horn.[Online].[13 April 2020].Available from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/horn-finger-gloves-t07845).
I find these constructs fascinating and would just love to try any of them!
For many of her installations, Horn used very varied objects- from violins and a piano to hospital beds. She likes to combine very fragile objects, like feathers, and others that evoke a feeling of danger to create tension between them. The violin that plays itself is a recurring object- a symbol of a person, or a person that has left. In the documentary, we follow the installation of “Free as a bird” from 1999, a spiral of hospital beds where violins play. She increasingly withdrew from performing herself, letting the objects take center stage and creating mechanical sculptures with movements and sounds. These sculptures are not perfect- and she explains how their imperfections and hesitations make them more human.
Later she started constructing automated drawing machines, where she has removed more of her own control. In “Flying books under Black rain painting” from 2015 at Harvard University, she lets a machine spray black paint over a white wall and three books.
There is an interesting tension in the drawing machines, between the cold, mechanical, calculated construction, and then the element out of control, the way the drops fall through gravity and mark the wall. This feels like a big step away from the control of the earlier works where the body was still initiating the movement and in itself an essential element of the investigation. The artist seems to imbue the machines with almost human qualities though, and sees how they can express emotions.
Course manual: “Aim: This project continues the theme of focusing attention on your own physicality and opening up your method to new ways of moving.”
I used my own physicality to explore mark-making for the body paintings in Assignment 2 – applying the paint on various body parts and pressing them to paper or canvas.
This exercise is asking me to remove control in another way- by applying the drawing material on a long stick that will require my whole body to move while making the marks.
I set up a still life with three lampshades- a subject that I want to explore as part of my parallel project as well. I attach a charcoal stick to the end of a long bamboo stick ( approx 2,5 m long) and stretch a large piece of paper on the floor:
This is the outcome:
In a second phase, I attach a whole bundle of oil pastel crayons together in different combinations.
This is the finished drawing:
The lines are somewhat wobbly, but other than that, this could have been a large version of a quick charcoal drawing in my sketchbook. I am not sure it is a record of my struggle.
I enjoy the coloured “woven” effects that appear from the bundle of crayons, and also the shape of the tiles on the floor appearing in the drawing as a rubbing.
I decide to complicate the situation with introducing a chair and a pitcher to the composition.
I think this time I achieved a super-accurate representation of my own struggle! (Especially on the chair!)
I notice a struggle for control while making these drawings. The brain does not quite want to let go and allow ‘free” marks to happen- looking at the still life there is still a struggle to represent it accurately.
In the end, these more free lines, that show how I had to wriggle my whole body to manipulate the stick with the charcoal, feel more fresh and interesting than a more accurate drawing. Definitely a find to carry forward.
Course manual: “Aim: This project should make you very aware of how your brain works when you’re drawing – by changing the sense that you’re translating into physical movement from sight to touch. As you’ll see, translating the visual processing of three dimensions into a physical movement designed to leave a trace on two dimensions, which in turn may give the illusion of three dimensions, is a highly sophisticated process.
Method: Choose a smallish object you know well, preferably something with a fairly distinctive shape. Position it on a table with a sketchpad next to it. Put your pencil in the middle of your sketchpad then close your eyes. Reach out for your object and feel it; as you do this, make a record of what you feel on your sketchpad with your pencil. Feel free to take a peek and reposition your pencil at any time, but do so as little as possible. Make several studies until you feel that you’ve arrived at something interesting.”
I start this exercise in the A4 sketchbook, by choosing to touch a small plant on my table. I also try it touching my foot.
I am noting an interesting resistance to letting go of the control that the sight gives, there is an urge to peek .
Having little time to myself these quarantine days, I transform this into a family activity, where we all, baby included, sit around the table and draw blind. I touch my own face for self portraits and then we draw each other without looking at the paper.
This produces some hilarious portraits and much laughter- I can definitely recommend it as an activity for quarantine days!
It is interesting to note how it took several attempts to move from a schematic, imagined view to actually draw what I felt, touching my face.
On this page, I tried to touch my face for the top one, and imagine it without looking at the page for the bottom drawing. The touching one definitely feels more evocative and true, compared to the imagined one that becomes a caricature. In the comparison, I understood that when wanting, I could let go and record the sensation of touch, and rather than trying to substitute sight, let that lead me to a new language.
Since coming to this house, we have had good laughs about the horrible tiles, the crazy layout of the rooms, the low ceilings- which all seemed really funny as we were planning all the great renovations we would do- move walls, open up glassdoors to a wonderful deck, change the whole kitchen and bathrooms of course.
A couple of moths later, due to the Covid 19 virus, here we are all of us safely tucked away without any income. Suddenly we will just have to love the house as it is!
While still believing that it was very temporary, I had some fun painting the kitchen
The bedroom closets
This week, already in quarantine and it dawning that this is not so temporary- the door to Tom’s room:
A couple of chairs:
The door to my room is next 🙂
This is already a very crazy house, but there is no reason to stop now! I am already looking at everything as a potential canvas.
This is how the orange door turned out:
And the door to the gas bottles:
My little assistant is happily painting along with water for now, but she will probably soon discover that my palette is different…
I have used various glass panes as supports for a series on drowning around the well. Now I am considering how these pieces of glass already tell a story of their own. Especially, there is a couple of triangular pieces of glass, that tell the story of coming from a old car. I started out by imagining what narratives I would paint on these pieces of glass, when I realized that just looking at them, the imagination of the viewer could already see so many different stories around this car.
Maybe the pride of driving it shining new all those years ago, a kiss, a road trip, shopping, an accident…
I let these pieces tell their story themselves, by simply placing them in different spots on the entrance driveway or outside the garage.
I am using “the empty room” that I describe in another blogpost as a sketchbook and include two small drawings on the walls about this car:
The well is a place of life and death in this area of long , dry summers. Anyone who asks about the house, asks if it has a good well, and yes, it does. There is also a darker side to the wells- a long tradition of suicides being committed in them. I though it was a joke when my Portuguese partner saw it as an absolute priority to order a new metal lid with a lock for the well, but no, it is really taken seriously.
My imagination connected the many stories of drowning and suicide in the wells with the collection of glass I have found on the property. I want to draw portraits under the glass of floating faces at peace.
I start by trying out painting with Cobra watersoluble oil paints on glass. My idea is to introduce water or drops at some points and let the image drown.
I ask my freediving friend Isa to send me some photos of herself under water to understand the facial expressions under water.
I start with some sketches using these facial expressions under water from the photos, but for different faces.
I am currently on Part 2.2 using sgraffitti, so I try out different compositions in this technique :
These are quick oil sketches in my A4 sketchbook:
The glass all have different qualities. I choose a large but thin and clear glass, probably from a shelf for Isa’s delicate face floating under water.
I carry the glass outside and photograph it in different locations. It is a symbolical walk that ends up leaning on the well and finally perched over the opening.
Where I dip it in water and let it wash away….
I am quite fascinated by the water soluble oil paints that have a thickness and viscosity that feels like traditional oil while painting, and then wash away like any water soluble paints. That said, the washed away face is too much, it does not leave anything to the imagination of a viewer.
Also, as for the image I painted, I realize that as so often, my very quick sketches in the sketchbook seem more true and have a softer ephemeral quality that I would like to keep. For a second trial on the glass, I choose to sketch lightly using only Payne’s Grey and a light outline.
I am happy with the softness and delicacy of this painting- it catches the ephemeral quality I was after. I decide to not wash it away, but merely let a few drops show the contact with water. I continue by carrying the glass outside and taking photographs.
I particularly like this image where my house and the large tree in front are reflected in Isa’s face.
I decide to leave this glass for now, and choose a thick, frosted glass, probably from a refrigerator for a second image. I am using Isa’s facial expressions but want to feature a different person.
I like the posture and the expression here and decide to put it away and see what wants to happen with it later.
I pick yet another glass, a transparent thicker one and paint a face in a close up, with the arms floating up over the head hinted at.
I like the details of the running paint in the hair while the face is clearer.
So I have three portraits under glass that I will set aside for the moment:
A light rain is starting to fall, and I have the idea to paint another face on glass and leave it out in the rain and see what happens.
I choose a piece that has a rusty border and a strange pink trace of spray paint. I decide to leave it as dirty as I found it.
And this is the image that I leave out on the well in the light rain:
The next morning , I am surprised and disappointed that nothing much has happened to the image.
I continued sketching on this theme for the Project 2.2 Markmaking materials:
I am quite fascinated by the paintings of Genevieve Figgis, who allows the paint to flow and puddle. She has often used various metal plates as supports. I want to experiment with very liquid paint ( watersoluble oils? Oils and Liquin? Acrylics and water?) and let it have a life of its own on the slippery glass surface. For the narrative, I have looked at how Marc Chagall tells his stories in different planes of the canvas.
In several of the rooms, a lampshade is left dangling from the ceiling and some curtains left on the window. In a way, these lonely left over objects just emphasize the emptiness of the room.
This room is to the North and always cold and dark. It has a weird shape and really low ceiling to one side. When I first saw it, it had very much very dark, heavy furniture in it and I can still feel the energy of this dark heaviness lingering. It took me a good while to even clean it out and it is definitely the space I have spent less minutes in.
I will change this by making “an empty room” one of the objects for the parallel project and by using this whole room as my sketchbook to record many of the stories I hear about the village.
I plan to start different stories at different parts of the walls and then continue the narratives til they meet and create a pattern over the room. At some point, these walls will be smashed and I will collect the stories as dust in a suitable box.
Hera I am, ready to start. A whole white room as my white page. And now I need to decide where to put down the tip of my pen.
The dangling lampshade seems to be the center around which the space moves and I climb the ladder to start there.
I start with my neighbor Donna Maria’s account of her first memory from when she was 3 or 4 years old and still little enough to be carried by her mother.
When I switch on the light, I am so happy I chose to start at this point in the room:
I start another story on the wall to the East, about Maria Jose walking to school with her little brother, the 4 km to the nearest primary school.
On the back wall, her granddaughter has a dog called Boss.
I realize that all three stories start with relationships- to the mother, to the dog, to the brother. I decide to leave the Western wall to a lonely figure- Donna Laura from the house on the other side of ours.
Her story is very sad. I will let it evolve around the figure in time.
I have written another blogpost about all the glass I have found, and some of the pieces are clearly from a car. I decide to let other parts of the walls start with stories about the cars from which these glasses came- using this room as a sketchbook:
I prepared several different pens, with the idea of letting fainter drawings lie further back in time than thicker, clearer drawings. I will let go of this though, as I will use the walls more freely and allow myself to grab whatever pen is at hand at the moment.
Spinning these drawings together in stories adds the dimension of time engrained in the piece, as well as the two-dimensionality of the drawings and the three-dimensionality of the whole room.
I will resume the drawings now again on this fresh coat of paint. There will probably not be any grand finale with breaking the walls and collecting the dust, but this room will still be the sketchbook for the stories.
Suddenly we also live full time in the unrenovated house with all the family, due to the lock down, so today it occurred to me that our presence, our life here will weave into the sketchbook entries on these walls too. We already belong to the story of this house.
The new map of this “empty room” looks like this:
The motives of the sketches on the walls here will connect to all other parts of the parallell project.
Our presence here first appeared with small sketches from a photoseries I did with my daughter and granddaughter wearing lampshades on their heads:
These are sketches for oil paintings that I logged more about under the part of the parallel project “lampshades”.
Also a sketch of my daughter longingly looking through the window after way too long in this house for quarantine:
Course manual: Make a drawing of a subject of your choice using the subject itself, or tools constructed from the subject, dipped in ink or paint.
THE BEACH
The directness of being outside in nature, at the beach, feeling, seeing and hearing the elements, and using only found materials to draw what is surrounding me, of course appealed to me. I prepared only a block of A4 watercolour paper, a pot of Indian ink and some white acrylic paints, and set off. This day, I did not yet know that a couple of days later it would become illegal to go to the beach, so this experience already carries a precious personal memory.
Within just a few minutes of walking in the sand, I had a whole collection of suitable painting materials- feathers, dry grasses, pieces of wood, trash, ropes and shells. And of course an unlimited supply of sand.
I started by trying out what marks my different tools can make with the ink.
I continued with a rather quick A4 drawing of the landscape around me, using the different marks.
I try to associate the “tools” with the elements that I am drawing. So I am using a feather for the light marks of the sky, stones and woods for the rocks and an algae producing little bubbles for the water.
I am mixing ink and sand and rub it to the paper with my fingers for the sandy parts of the image.
Finally, I add a few strokes of white acrylic paint on the crest of the waves with a feather. This is the first final sketch A4:
I regret adding the white marks, the drawing felt clearer and more focused on the variety of the marks before.
I start over and focus on the markmaking the different tools allow:
I am happier with this second, rougher version.
I decide to wrap my collection of tools and bring them home to push this further on a larger format drawing back in the studio.
I follow the same principle of using “tools” or materials that are as close as possible to the elements I am depicting- using sand to draw sand, water algae to draw water, feathers for the sky, rocks for the rocks, grass for the grass etc.
This is the final drawing, approximately 150×250 cm:
These are some close-ups:
Water drawn with algae:
Rocks drawn with stones:
Sky drawn with feathers:
Wood drawn with wood:
Shells drawn with shells:
Sand drawn with sand:
And beach grasses drawn with different leaves, sticks and grasses:
I feel happy with the exploration of the different marks my found tools can make in the details, but in the larger piece made at home, I can definitely feel how less spontaneous it is and the final result is suffering from it. I much preferred the directness of the experience of painting on the beach.
( to be continued in a life after the virus…)
THE BODY
This assignment brief also feels like an invitation to explore bodypainting- painting my hands with my hands, my feet with my feet, my hair with my hair, my body with my body. I finally have a space that allows serious messiness, and I have of a long white roll of paper. Also, we are in quarantine by now, so painting on location is not an option. The thought of painting my body with my body is just getting louder and louder.
When I am standing here in front of the huge white paper, I have a lot of possible drawings in mind, but I want to stay spontaneous and just let one mark lead to the next. I start by covering my whole right side with a bright red paint acrylic and lie down on the paper.
And again:
I couldn’t really guess how this would turn out, but the feeling of painting with my whole body is fantastic (despite is being really too cold!) This two prints looks like two figures interlaced and the wispy marks of the back hand randomly became a face. This drawing is already expressing a lot with so little that I decide to leave it for a day or two and see if I need to continue, instead of spoiling it by doing too much. I have an urge to walk around with my feet covered in black paint, but I am not sure.
After coming back and looking at it for two days, I just can’t stop myself. I cover the soles of my feet with black and walk around at the bottom of the drawing.
It was a miss. I should have left it alone. What I can do now is crop it to this, leaving just some footsteps…:
I start over again with a vertical paper larger than me:
This time I am really seeing a fuller image of my whole body from the front and am especially curious about the marks from my hair. I feel magically drawn to the red colour again and when I look down on my body I start by covering my left breast, uneven and imperfect after surgery for breastcancer two years ago. I stop right there and just press that one breast to the paper. I spill some drops of paint to the floor.
I feel so much. This simple touch of my one mutilated breast on the large white paper said it all. I did quite a few drawings of the experience at the time but nothing expressed it as well as this. I feel how all that I was, suddenly became reduced to this one spot, how from being so much, I became a person with breastcancer. How lost I was. I was surprised at the strength of my feelings now. This experience lies two years back, and I would have thought that I had healed it both physically and emotionally.
This drawing is finished.
I continued by touching the paint and taking photos:
The direction and strength of this experience took me by surprise. It became more revealing and personal than I had intended. Also, I am incapable of judging how much this drawing is readable for anyone else, or if it is just so strong for myself.
The next day, I felt like taking it off the wall became a part of the experience- clearing and opening up to a feeling of relief.
BODY, nr 2
I am ready for a second trial and come back to painting my body with my body.
Meanwhile, I have researched the “Anthropométries series” by Yves Klein from the early 1960’s. He used nude models to act as “living brushes” in performances where they were covered in International Klein Blue (IKB)- a blue patented by Klein that he used in almost all his work- and then touched their bodies to huge canvases.
My studio is prepared with two large pieces of paper from my giant roll, one vertical and one horizontal. This time I am using childrens fingerpaint, as I had a really hard time scrubbing off the red acrylic paint last time. I can’t begin to imagine scrubbing of the precious IKB oil paint.
Yves Klein missed out on a really crucial part of the experience here I believe. Covering the body in paint and feeling how it wants to fall on the paper is an incredible experience that I would not want to miss!
I start by using the backside of the “Beach” drawing described above, so the paper has a wobbly surface here:
This is the final drawing:
It is almost like a limp figure carried by some birds, or upwards. I find it unfortunately chaotic. There are too many small marks to give a very clear and coherent sense of body. I do like the uneven surface though , that adds a level of texture.
For the vertical paper, I add yellow colour to my underarms and stand in front of the paper lifting my arms as in a sun salutation.
I am closing my eyes and focusing on the movement.
I decide to press my black body to the paper too:
I really like the winglike aura, which reflects the feeling of the movement really well. This is a light drawing, unfortunately really tricky to photograph. It has much more atmosphere in the flesh. Emotionally, today’s’ drawings were just fun and messy, I did not experience as much as strongly as last time.
A couple of days later, I am ready for another trial. This time I prepare a longer piece of the paper on the floor, so that I can create a series of figures. I am using black paint again, liking the simplicity of it. Black could be ink or charcoal or many kinds of paint but has the connotation of being just that- a drawing medium, whereas the red spirals my imagination towards blood. I am avoiding using blue to be too close to Kleins’ project.
This is the final drawing. I have tried to create a wavelike movement, like springing up from a crouching position and continuing tumbling over.
I find the drawing stronger, when cropped to the two first figures:
I prepare one more horizontal paper. This time I go back to the red, but without washing of the black layer and lie down one side after the next:
I like the creature like shape that comes out of this. It is not as strong as the image that I achieved the first time though, with the two figures intertwined.
This time again, I greatly enjoyed the experience. It is a magical feeling to stand in front of a huge white paper and not have any preconceived idea of what will happen, more than using my whole body as the drawing instrument to draw the body. It feels like I am stepping out of the process and allow it to happen, while at the same time being absolutely and literally immersed in the drawing.
BODY nr 3
Since looking at Yves Klein’s work, the idea of using oil on canvas has of course intensified with me saying yes- no- yes – no several times a day. Some time ago, I bought a first piece of untreated linen canvas to experiment with pouring diluted paints like Helen Frankenthaler. Am I going to use it for a single moment of body printing instead?
I am going to go for it… With the argument that I can always prime it and use it for something else later (although not as I intended).
I start by testing if it makes a difference, if I put the thin linen on an absorb able cloth surface or on a glossy paper. I imagine that the thin material will let the paint seep through and might react differently.
I will use watersoluble oil paints and also want to test how traumatizing the washing off is.
No, it does not make a difference if the underlying surface is absorbable. Actually, I am surprised at how resistant the surface is, I had imagined the diluted paint would bleed more.
I choose to use red colour again, mixing Winsor&Newtons Artisan Cadmium red medium with a Cobra Carmin. The colour of the canvas is grey-brown and adding the red colour has a primal feel, reminiscent of a cave painting. It also feels primal because it looks like blood, adding another bodily element to the process.
It is all ready, but I feel a crushing responsibility at messing up the canvas, which takes away the lightness of the experience. I try lying down in different positions first without paint, which I did not do the previous times.
Here we go..
This is the painting after two rounds:
It is actually easier to wash off than acrylics! (And it helps that we have installed hot water in the house by now.)
I hang the canvas vertically and take a photo with the ladder to show the scale:
This is the final painting:
I am not overwhelmed with the result, but it is also not a total miss. Compared to the works on paper, there is a much wider range of tones, many a little blurred or “wispy” marks, depending on how much paint got absorbed. I feel that this painting is somewhere between a cave painting and an Xray.
As a whole, painting with my whole body has been an incredible experience in fusing the subject and the process. It has been really interesting and surprising to observe my feelings coming up through the experience. It is also a process to accept the result when I only have seconds to paint, and so much time and material to prepare and to clean up.
Clara's Drawing 2 