Frustrated by the lack of daylight hours available due to the commitments of the day job, & also by the compromised nature of the natural ‘light’ (when available) due to the all-enveloping, life-sapping bleakness of the post-snow season, I took the radical step of attempting to draw, during a weekday evening, under artificial light, only to be thwarted by the satiny-metallic & thus reflective surface of the graphite-covered paper: it was near-impossible to see what one was drawing, where the pencil point was landing & the marks it was making. Factoring-in also the deadening effect of the artificial light upon the surface of the source object, said attempt was abandoned.
This situation then prompted thoughts of how the drawings as (re)presented via this portal (i.e. in the form of scans) fail to communicate a fundamental aspect of their being, their own surface-object quality, textured & light-reflective in the manner of the compressed objects depicted within the picture plane, which photography is able reveal...
By way of comparative illustration, here is another of the 'Pop Art Roadkill' diptych drawings-as-scanned-image as it appears in the context of its original posting, a faithful two-dimensional representation of the mark-making process, recording the various familiar overlays (which seem to reproduce particularly well) & erasures, etc.
This 'pure image', however, offers no information as regards the 'object' surface quality of the drawing, notably its sheen & also the 'workings-into' the paper caused by the physical pressure applied during the mark-making process & the consequent indentations resulting from such, which ‘distress’ & buckle the surface of the drawing, producing incidents of highlight & shadow, in a manner that creates something of a dialogue with the physical nature of the depicted object with its own metallic, uneven surface & crumpled (reformed) form.
The drawings-as-photographed thus allow a fuller representation of the experience of the drawing-as-object, in their physical manifestation, three-dimensional albeit in very low relief, with ‘tactile’ surfaces subject to the play of light...
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