Deep(er) in the Woods

Following yesterday’s post, detailing the small revisions made to the first two ‘woodscape’ paintings, today we present the fruit of what has been the main thrust of creative activity over and since the Yuletide period in the form of a third such painting taking as its visual source a scene from deep within the predominantly pine-wooded environment beyond the rear perimeter of TOoT Towers (working in the conservatory at the back of the property is, obviously, the perfect location for all those instances of necessary empirical visual research that are an essential component of the painting process).

‘Woodscape #3’

oil on canvas/48″ x 24″/December 2016 – January 2017

‘Resolved’ (whether suitably/satisfactorily enough only time spent looking and considering will reveal), the painting continues in the manner of that pair preceding it and reveals explicitly its facture, the overt structure of horizontal and vertical brushstrokes, and the materiality of the paint and its mostly wet-into-wet application in the service of both the painting-as-object (transitional object) and the represented embodied experience of being present within the woods, treading upon the carpet of pine needles and moss and being confronted by the sheer verticality of the tree trunks and evidence of their foliage between and beyond. What one finds is that communicating this experience in paint becomes more and more complex and difficult each time one returns to the easel to represent the subject matter, more hermetic for want of a better word (and Cubism and Cézanne are never very far away, either) as, perhaps, this painting appears.

Outside of the world of the painting, but a valuable part of the process of its making, I must make mention of a couple of the elements of the accompanying musical soundtrack – Tom Waits’ ‘Mule Variations’, which sounded particular wonderful this last Sunday afternoon, and the long-overdue discovery of Can, oft-cited as an influence upon a number of artists whose work has proved to be an enduring favourite (not least early Public Image Ltd) but, especially absurdly it seems in the event, who had remained unexplored until recently, intriguing stuff and suitable grist to the painting mill.

Hope Springs Eternal...

graphite & coloured pencil/30x20cm

A little plein air drawing session, on a bright but cold autumn morning, resulted in this representation of a view, from an elevated position in & thus overlooking the woods which have become both the course of the regular constitutional post-punk walks & the source of the drawings that featured during July & August (& are fully intended to be developmentally continued), of the local Hope Mountain.

In warmer weather, this might be just the subject to pursue inspired by the manner of Cézanne’s engagement with his Mont Sainte-Victoire, such, perhaps, is the potential of the motif from the particular site.

Going Digital #3

Continuing the experiment of drawing with the new digital pen, & returning to Cézanne as the source from which to trace an image for the purposes of mark-making, on this occasion one of the artist’s landscape studies, in his recognizable technique of exploratory lines & tonal ‘hatching’.
Again, as (noted) with the two previous examples, degrees of loss (of detail & subtlety) & difference are clearly discernible between the reproduction of the original Cézanne pencil drawing, the biro tracing & the digital reading/processing of the tracing, each media displaying their own distinct(ive) qualities.


Cézanne 'Landscape with Trees' c.1885-87
pencil on paper/12x21cm


tracing after Cézanne 'Landscape with Trees'
biro on tracing paper/30x20cm


digital reading of tracing after Cézanne 'Landscape with Trees'

As has become the usual final stage of the process, we also present the digital image as converted to text, again the drawn marks intriguingly translated into a sequence of what has become the norm of uppercase Es, hash & Yen symbols with a scattering of asterisks thrown in & also, rather bizarrely, the words ‘feed’ &, rather bizarrely, ‘tonsillitis!’ (sic) – that exclamation mark is not necessarily a surprise under such circumstances…

r*e*E'€eET#Ei*EEEEIE*EF##*a*±h-g T t*p*p*H *¥EFFt€EE#r***Eh⇐EE±*wksie÷ph*F feed
ankgegpe##EEEEEEtE*<=*¥E¥eztfaeeI¥tf¥atµ
- #EEaeayµµkie±E÷I¥£¥s±±¥¥fkedtfett do I f=a*m*j--714 I=I tonsillitis!ttttttttttf EEEEEEEEEEEIEEEIE.IEF±ttttte
-* rMMMn=I_Mmm+->. t*H
-

Going Digital #2

A second drawing made with the new digital pen, again a tracing based upon an artist’s drawing acting as a guide in the interests of exploring the instrument’s mark-making potential. After beginning with Cezanne, we now draw upon Giacometti as the template, given his distinctive mode of mark-making, & his drawing transcribed from Cezanne’s portrait of Victor Choquet, an appropriate coincidence with a mind to continuity & dialogue: Giacometti, indeed, made a number of studies from Cezanne’s drawings & paintings, over the course of many years (dating from the 1920s onwards), exploring a range of styles in the process of doing so.


tracing after Giacometti, biro on tracing paper, 30x20cm

As with the previous example, the tracing necessarily loses something in translation, as the semi-transparency of the paper & the subsequent marks upon it serve to obscure some of the subtleties & details of the source image: this, of course, can be regarded as a good thing as it allows the new drawing to become a thing in & of itself, at a distance from the reproduction of the original (in the volume ‘Cezanne & Giacometti: Paths of Doubt’).
The physical fact of the use of different media – organic, responsive graphite pencil for the original, the machine of the less subtle & versatile biro for the tracing – also emphasizes such distance & difference, which the digital reading of the pen drawing, as processed digitally, then intensifies.

Again, it’s a fascinating process to trace an artist’s hand & moves, in this instance trying to replicate Giacometti’s explorations at arriving at some degree of resolution to the problem of achieving the form of the image he was studying & using as his model, charting a course through the labyrinth of gestures, the flow of constant revisions, the gradual honings & homings-in, as recorded by his pencil & evidenced below.


Alberto Giacometti 'After Cezanne: Portrait of Victor Choquet' c.1950
pencil on paper/30x31cm

As before, the digital version of the the biro pen drawing as read by the receiver & subsequently uploaded to the computer displays quite differently from the marks as made upon the sheet of tracing paper, appearing distinctively much in the manner of a drawing made with a fibre tipped pen, broader again in its communication of lack of variation of touch.


Finally, the digital image as converted into a text via a Word document, with perhaps not as many looped characters as might be expected to appear, apart from a smattering of lowercase t's, instead again favouring uppercase Es & Yen symbols: no meaning, of whats, hows or whys, seems to be discernible!

ftItTeFeEEeEEEEIiEtFEFf¥tEytIfIh¥Ei¥¥tItTEt*t¥tItIE¥FttttiTIPh¥ypMgP
testate'ttttt¥tttt*i¥EIIgoIt¥t*oei¥ttd*t
tha¥#¥e##*

Going Digital

A new year &, with it, a new tool with which, amongst other things, to make marks & drawings; sourced, researched & then kindly presented by A during the course of the recent festivities.
The thing itself is Staedtler’s ‘Digital Pen’ which, essentially, functions in the manner of an ordinary ballpoint pen, allowing the user to make handwritten ink notes or sketches, but is also capable of saving such results in digital form via the device of a receiver & its related software program(s) which enables them to be uploaded to a computer for saving, further processing or even conversion to text in the form of a Word document. Even as one becomes more & more familiar with technology, still some developments can appear somewhat remarkable, & the existence of such an instrument & its functionality seems to fall into this category: the fact that the software can recognize one’s scrawl & endeavour to read it before then converting it to neat, legible, typefaced text is rather impressive.
Such is not necessarily the main purpose to which the pen has been applied thus far, however, & here TooT (re)presents evidence of the first purposeful drawing endeavour for which it has been used.

By way of brief explanation, in the interests of embarking upon a mark-making exercise, whilst considering artists’ drawings & also coincidentally engaged in reading the essays contained with the Jasper Johns ‘Gray’ catalogue, with that book’s tracing paper dust jacket (photographically illustrated here), it was decided to make tracings of a few chosen drawings that offered particular mark-making potential in the copying of or ‘being guided by’, with the aim of an exploration of the digital pen’s capabilities.
In a sense, that ‘guiding’ actually is the case, as, once one begins the tracing process, the combination of the made marks upon the surface, & anyway the not-wholly-transparent nature, of the tracing paper, where some of the subtleties of what lies beneath might become somewhat compromised, interferes with & precludes a properly clear reading of the original image, thus one is drawing an approximation of a representation, all with an instrument of a different nature to that used to make the original drawing, should that prove not to have been a biro.

Accordingly, the first drawing chosen to serve a model for the digital pen experimentation was a Cezanne self-portrait from circa 1880, itself made with graphite on paper, as it appears reproduced in the book ‘Cezanne by Himself’: represented firstly is the original tracing/drawing of (an interesting & attractive double-sided object in itself).


copy of Cezanne 'Self-Portrait', biro on tracing paper, 30x20cm

As anyone who has have drawn with a biro might appreciate, the pen, whilst it offers a certain range of mark-making potential, in terms of weight of application, is by no means capable of the variety & subtleties of a pencil, thus the resulting physical drawing is quite different in nature to the source image for all that it is intended to be a reasonably faithful copy of the essential form & its constituent marks: a comparison with a reproduction of the original Cezanne drawing might illustrate this.


Cezanne 'Self-Portrait' c.1880
pencil/30x25cm

Then, the pen drawing in digital form, as read & stored by the receiver & uploaded to the computer. A certain difference of appearance is discernible, & slight loss of detail & subtlety might be observed as having been lost in translation from the original drawing, distancing us further from the Cezanne self-portrait from which the proceedings were sourced.


Finally, & taking us rather some distance from the original Cezanne drawing upon which this particular endeavour is based, we present the digital drawing as converted, experimentally, to text, its marks translated into letters & other symbolic characters: a curious reading, to be sure, & whatever could it mean, in the manner of ‘how’ it does, considering that the text is presented in a format that bears no formal relation to the composition of the drawn image...? It’s intriguing, for instance, that such a reading begins with the word ‘jammy’ (?!) but then chooses to offer nothing other than a flurry of information of which no linguistic sense can be made, other than, perhaps, something of a penchant for E’s & Yen, which we’re sorted for, obviously, in addition to hashes & asterixes, which symbolic transpositions from the original marks & hatchings might be regarded as being understandable.

jammy
#E### i*a*t
FEEK ***#FEE¥*t*
t*A*g*j tIE¥⇐**EEE*II¥y
t*f*E*e.*E*EIEE÷eftIIiIItt
#E**i¥#gg*'EIyF#tth
y*x *EE#E**iIt#EI¥E¥k¥#¥*gn§t,
tpgfFfyy**¥¥#

More Grate Stuff...

Following-on from the immediately previous watercolour drawing, & continuing with the current general concerns of the explicit statement of horizontal & vertical formal elements within the composition, which complement both each other & also the sequence of diagonals into which the objects have invariably been reformed, on this occasion incorporating a more dominant 'approximate' representation of a drainage grid, & the rust-patinated barred grating of, embedding the 'roadkill' object within such formal device, in the manner of one such object found resting upon & framed in a recent photograph...


graphite, putty eraser, wax crayon & watercolour/30x20cm

Currently reading Matthew Simms' 'Cezanne's Watercolors: Between Drawing and Painting' & amongst many an interesting point as raised in the text, one such concerns the 'tactility' of the artist's facture, originally as applied to considerations of his oil painting (Merleau-Ponty writes of the kinaesthetic intertwining of the optical & the tactile in Cezanne's painting), but also much in evidence in the watercolours (to which I must admit a particularly deep & abiding attachment), where the discrete brushstrokes retain their individual identity & character even when repeatedly overlaid across the continuum of the picture surface.
Simms argues that, in Cezanne's watercolours, with their obvious division of labour, drawing performs the 'tactile' function & watercolour the optical in the ongoing formal dialogue between the two, but, personally, Cezanne's application of watercolour alone is itself both tactile & optical, explicity so through the manner in which the vibrant hues of the paint is applied in, generally, small touches of the brush that dry, become fixed, undeniably as such.
Obviously, this explicit record of process is also very much a personal concern, hence the technique of deliberate small brushstrokes - that also pay a certain referential homage to Braque's & Picasso's Cubist 'stippling' - employed in the facture of this particular series of watercolour drawings, & also the general commitment to the mark-made nature of my surfaces as has been carried out in the drawings presented here at TOoT over the last few years.
Braque it was, indeed, who spoke of the representation of 'tactile spaces' (as perceived) in his painting (which one might relate to Cezanne's 'envelope' of light & atmosphere surroundings objects, features of the landscape, etc), & such has long been a subject of much fascination to me, being that which connects artist & spectator in a profoundly human & philosophical manner.

Soundtrack:

Test Match Special England v Pakistan 2nd Test, days 2 & 3

Cross Purposes

Today the opposite of tomato is the handclaps on Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ ‘The Weeping Song’ & Belle & Sebastian’s ‘Seymour Stein’ (especially the first one, where the instrumental coda kicks in)


graphite/20x30cm
original source: ‘The Times’ 19/03/08

The appeal of this photographic source image was immediate in formal terms, with its reminder to me of such images of Mondrian’s as ‘Pier & Ocean’ & ‘Composition in Line’ from the final transitional stage of his painting before his arrival at Neoplasticism, his mature & iconic style: in effect, the white crosses against a darker-toned ground could be seen as ‘negatives’ of the black forms on white grounds of the Mondrian paintings, in which it is clear to see how he was soon to be able to coalesce his ‘plus/minus’ formal language (regularized, geometricized from more sinuous, curving, organic forms) of horizontal & vertical marks, draw them out, into his characteristic grids (& thus leave a huge legacy to Modernist painting).


Piet Mondrian ‘Composition #10 in Black & White (Pier and Ocean)’
Oil on canvas/1915


Piet Mondrian ‘Composition in Line’
Oil on canvas/1917

Another link to Modernist art history is provided by the insistently vertical composition of the photo, recalling that of Braque & Picasso in their earliest Cubist paintings, developing the formal explorations made by Cezanne - all these examples in the context of the landscape - with Mondrian in turn developing his work from Cubism, making the breakthrough into a purely abstract language from which Braque & Picasso had retreated when diverting their Cubist explorations into the realm of collage, introducing fragments of the recognizably real world back into their images which, with their ‘hermetic’ Cubist work, had become almost abstract.


With the current drawing project using photographic sources as its inspiration, it’s particularly appropriate, perhaps, to be reading at present ‘Vermeer’s Camera’, Philip Steadman’s most interesting study of and exploration into the artist’s possible-probable use of the camera obscura, one of the earliest forms of ‘image making’ technology. Fascinating contents, including much historical information & reconstructions in real space of Vermeer’s compositions and a camera obscura, seeming to present compelling evidence of the artist’s use of such equipment in the making of his paintings, the evolution of his style, as, similarly, did David Hockney’s broader-ranging (in terms of artists researched) ‘Secret Knowledge’ a few years ago (wonderful book, especially the reproductions & Hockney’s correspondence with Martin Kemp, the dialogue between them as Hockney’s findings & ideas develop, & a magical TV documentary, I recall). But still the sheer beauty of the paintings, Vermeer’s touch, his miraculous representation of light, remains, whatever explanations or hypotheses may be advanced.

More Grids

Today the opposite of tomato is ( )

Sometimes it's amazing just how serendipitous the occurrence of certain images can be.
Following on from the newspaper photo used as source material for the recent drawing featuring the check-patterned dress, came this picture, sequentially most appropriate & also perfectly relating in formal terms to the working methods of many artists, particularly those involved in the transcription of photographs.
Again, the lure of the old faithful modernist grid proved irresistible, particularly when presented in such an explicit form. Such a source image also provided the opportunity, the invitation, to transcribe it into a drawing in a classically systematic manner by a cell-by-cell process beginning in the top left hand corner, working horizontally to the right & then in this manner line-by-line vertically, to finish in the bottom right, the first time I’d ever attempted such an approach, this process being tempered slightly by occasional returns to make tonal revisions of certain individual cells as necessary once a more all-over tonal pattern began to emerge as the systematic process progressed.


graphite/20x30cm
original source: 'The Times' 22/02/08

As an example of the squaring-up & transcribing process, I shall cite the work & working methods of Chuck Close, to whom I’ve already made reference during the course of this year’s drawing-from-photographs project, illustrated by one of his measured-up ‘photo maquettes’ & then the finished painting, the scale of which is quite breath-taking when seen in relation to the artist himself.



Although this is an early work of Close’s & his technique & style have developed considerably since the 60s, still his adherence to the grid endures: indeed, it became & has remained an explicit element of the paintings’ form, with each cell its own perfectly-formed abstract picture within the complete brightly-coloured picture, the all-over patterned design from which can be discerned the figurative elements, coalescing & dissolving, of the human head upon which, in photographic form, it is based.

It’s fascinating, indeed, to trace the progress of the grid in Modernist painting, from its genesis in Cezanne's increasing statement of series of horizontals & verticals parallel to the picture’s edges, through the scaffolding of Braque’s & Picasso’s Cubism, to Mondrian’s gradual development culminating in his explicit, rigid, black-lined grid structures, & then the grid’s frequent subsequent recurrence in various forms in the work of such diverse artists as Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman & Close amongst others. Once referred to an ‘unreconstructed modernist’, the grid remains something to which I’m drawn…quite literally in this latest example of drawing practice & process!

Soundtrack:


Sigur Ros ‘Aegytis Byrjun’, ( ) & 'Takk'
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset ‘The Bairns’

Roll With It...

Today, the opposite of tomato is ‘Growing Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Rooms’*

… & presenting a couple of quick sketches of compositions of toilet roll tubes - the 2nd perhaps offering Morandi-esque possibilities for development - that could be said to be taking Cezanne's advice to treat nature as 'the cylinder, cone & sphere' but are in fact largely used as a pretext to mentioning a couple of examples of much more aesthetic & poetic uses of such source material & cardboard in general.



both graphite/30x21cm

Firstly, the toilet roll ‘city’ featuring in one of the wonderful hand-made animated segments of Michel Gondry’s ‘The Science of Sleep’, long-anticipated, recently watched & adored. The film itself is a constant source of invention & delight, funny, poignant & generally bonkers, with engaging performances & a pleasingly ambiguous resolution to the protagonists’ relationship: do they end up together – being obviously meant for each other – or not, other than in a dream? One must remain ever-attentive to, amongst other things, the shifts in language between English & subtitled French & live action & animation, which are also often (indeed mostly) combined to highly original & enjoyable effect. The DVD’s ‘making of’ features is a further delight, infused by the same engaging personality(ies) as the film, enlightening in terms of the behind-the-scenes secrets it reveals yet managing not to detract at all from the essential magic & poetry of the production, even serving to increase one’s amazement at & admiration of the manner in which things individually & the whole itself were achieved. The labour (of love) intensive, home-made, hand made quality of the cardboard tableaux, the Stephanie character’s ‘knitted’ soft objects, the cardboard car that features in the police ‘chase’, Stephane’s cardboard TV set, the gadgets, all are such wonderful constructions, aesthetically & inventively in their eccentricity. Watch this film & fall in love with it!











Also the fascinating paintings of William Daniels, recently discovered. Constructing maquettes of familiar paintings – anything from the Renaissance to the modern era & up to date, e.g. Georg Baselitz – from torn paper & cardboard (discarded cigarette packets, toilet roll tubes, etc), folded, ‘sculpted’ & taped, Daniels then produces highly detailed & realistic, mostly monochrome paintings of these crumpled, distressed-looking models. A relationship with Cubism seems particularly apparent, from the paintings’ colouring, tonal subtleties & the collage nature of both the models & the subsequent paintings’ style
The maquettes are interesting enough in themselves & amusing in their abject, idiosyncratic appearance, especially when traced back to their sources, e.g. a series of Cezanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire. At first, I thought these had merely been photographed & presented as such, & were perfect enough in that, but the realisation that they are paintings – & an original twist on the still life genre, contemporary whilst referencing the history of art & establishing a dialogue with these traditions & individual artists - takes them onto a whole new level of wonder.

























‘David with the Head of Goliath’ (Caravaggio)

Mont Sainte Victoire (Cezanne)

























'The Forest on its Head' (Baselitz)



'L'Origin du Monde' (Courbet)



Still Life (Morandi)


(* & reading Richard Brautigan, again)

15th September

The colours presented by the quinces seen against the background of a bright, rich turquoise-blue envelope were just too appealing not to want to explore in colour too.
Still looking closely at Uglow, & the presence of Cezanne is a given - took recent advantage of the National Gallery book sale to obtain the catalogue of last year's 'Cezanne in Britain' exhibition, which was a profound pleasure to attend, to be able to see the paintings & watercolours themselves & appreciate the wonderful touches & subleties that went into bringing the work to life was indeed an education.


graphite & watercolour/30x22cm

Here's another Uglow, his frequently employed blue backdrop (with geometric divisions) again providing an obvious reference & inspiration ('Two Pears' 1990 from the previous post also features a deep blue 'wall' behind).


Euan Uglow 'Chinese Pear' 1990