Yet another Drawing Workshop that I found very engaging. This one we were given advanced warning as to what we would be doing so we could bring some items in to either draw on or in.
Drawing in a book is not something I am comfortable about. Even writing in a book that has been bought for the purpose of research as part of my studies I still struggle. So to take a book from the shelf and desecrate the inside took a lot of will power even if the book was not even mine, it was an old technical journal inherited from my step-father. Why the issues about drawing in it then? Books seem to be something you treasured, something you kept pristine, you didn't turn the corner of the pages down, you were careful with the spine, the cover, even the loose slip cover if it had one. Sometimes the outer jacket was hiding a much more elaborate hardcover, one that might have been foil blocked, embossed or have detail printed on that you wouldn't have seen if you didn't take the slip cover off.
I selected a page that had a technical drawing on. A drawing that used language I don't understand, diagrams, connections, labels and numbers. I decided to use the same unknown language and graphically extend the image, blurring the boundaries between the original to the point where the original was indecipherable. I extended it to the edge of the age, incorporated the text and wrote extra descriptions in the same style as the original. It was fun disguising the original, making nonsense of sense.
I also brought in some cabbage leaves to see if I could write on these. After initially trying with a pen, which wouldn't take I decided to take a scalpel to one of the leaves and see how I could write with that.
Not being what to draw/cut I decided to play with the word ART. Cutting it out. Is it art? It's certainly the letters that spell art. You read it as art. I liked the ambiguous angle.
I also took one of the plaster cast hands I had previously created and drew over that, I also tried to draw with it but it was better at being drawn on. I managed to transfer my fingerprints onto the cast using ink. This gave the cast of a latex glove a further element of handness, without being a hand. Even a cast of a hand. Reacting to the fingerprints I decided to make swirly patterns to replicate the shapes fingerprints create, looking at the creases in the skin but intentionally not putting them where you expect to see them, using them as more decoration than replication of a real hand.
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