Writing on Drawing: Essays on Drawing Practice and Research

Writing on Drawing

Essays on Drawing Practice and Research

Edited by Steve Garner

Series Editor: John Steers

First Published in the UK in 2008 by

Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS163JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2008 by

Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E.60th Street, Chicago,

IL60637, USA

Copyright © 2008 NSEAD

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

Series: Readings in Art and Design Education

Series Editor: John Steers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons

Cover Image: Plan de Dessin, 1 st Edition: Autumn 2006. A drawing of the Bigger Picture of

Drawing by Stephen Farthing. Graphics: Dennis Mariner.

Copy Editor: Holly Spradling

Indexer: Sue Vaughan

Type setting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire

ISSN 1747-6208

ISBN978-1-84150-200-7

EISBN 978-1-84150-254-0

Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Foreword – Re: Positioning Drawing

Anita Taylor

Introduction

Steve Garner

Chapter 1 Towards a Critical Discourse in Drawing Research

Steve Garner

Chapter 2 Nailing the Liminal: The Difficulties of Defining Drawing

Deanna Petherbridge

Chapter 3 Drawing Connections

Richard Talbot

Chapter 4 Looking at Drawing: Theoretical Distinctions and their Usefulness

Ernst van Alphen

Chapter 5 Pride, Prejudice and the Pencil

James Faure Walker

Chapter 6 Reappraising Young Children’s Mark-making and Drawing

Angela Anning

Chapter 7 New Beginnings and Monstrous Births: Notes Towards an Appreciation of Ideational Drawing

Terry Rosenberg

Chapter 8 Embedded Drawing

Angela Eames

Chapter 9 Recording: And Questions of Accuracy

Stephen Farthing

Chapter 10 Drawing: Towards an Intelligence of Seeing

Howard Riley

Chapter 11 Digital Drawing, Graphic Storytelling and Visual Journalism

Anna Ursyn

Notes on Contributors

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The chapter by Angela Anning contains material first published in Anning, A. & Ring, K. (2004) Making Sense of Children’s Drawings, Buckingham: Open University Press. The material is reproduced with the kind permission of the Open University Press.

Use of the Lucebert image ‘Zwevende Boer’ (Floating farmer) in Deanna Petherbridge’s chapter by kind permission of Tony Swaanswijk-Lucebert and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Richard Talbot acknowledges the financial support of AHRC in this research and Newcastle University in paying DACS’ visual creators for the use of their artistic works.

Terry Rosenberg thanks John Rhys Newman for allowing access to his ‘fictions’ and allowing a selection to reproduced.

Angela Eames acknowledges the time and enthusiasm of Michael Kidner in the research for her chapter.

Anna Ursyn thanks her students for the artwork used in her chapter.

Steve Garner

PREFACE

This book is the sixth in a planned series of anthologies dealing with a range of issues in art and design education. The previously published titles in the Intellect ‘Readings in Art and Design Education’ series are:

Critical Studies In Art & Design Education

Art Education in a Postmodern World

Histories of Art and Design Education

The Problem of Assessment in Art & Design

Research in Art & Design Education: Issues and Exemplars

Further titles are in preparation.

This book departs from the format of earlier books in the series where the source of chapters was predominantly papers originally published in the [International] Journal of Art & Design Education. The chapters of this book are all previously unpublished.

The National Society for Education in Art and Design is the leading national authority in the United Kingdom, combining professional association and trade union functions, which represents every facet of art, craft and design in education. Its authority is partly based upon a century-long concern for the subject, established contacts within government and local authority departments, and a breadth of membership drawn from every sector of education from the primary school to universities.

More information about the Society and its range of publications is available at www.nsead.org or from NSEAD, The Gatehouse, Corsham Court, Corsham, Wiltshire SN13 0BZ, United Kingdom. (Tel: +44 (0)1249 714825)

John Steers

Series Editor

FOREWORD – RE: POSITIONING DRAWING

Anita Taylor

Drawing is a central and pivotal activity to the work of many artists and designers, a touchstone and tool of creative exploration that informs visual discovery and enables the envisagement and development of perceptions and ideas. Often categorised as a lesser activity than the main artefact or product, or otherwise remaining an intimate element of art practice, drawing has often been withheld from public viewing and the discourse in the field has often been marred by romantic visions of what drawing could and should be and how it might or might not be taught. Despite this conjecture, drawing remains a significant and important activity to many, is extensively encouraged if not taught in education and remains an important means of creative development, exploration and achievement. With a history as long and extensive as the history of our culture, the act of drawing remains a primordial and fundamental means to translate, document, record and analyse the worlds we inhabit.

There are distinct ways in which drawing functions as it distinguishes and aids us in understanding our complex world. Through signs and symbols, by mapping and labelling our experience, it can also enable us to discover through seeing – either through our own experience of seeing, observing and recording or through the shared experience of looking at another’s drawn record of an experience. Drawing may have a transitory and temporal relationship with the world or it may provide a record of lasting permanence. It may be propositional, preparatory, visionary, imaginative, associative, factual, generative, transformative or performative. Drawing as an investigative, transformative and generative tool for the realisation and transference of ideas is at its best when the means of making are harnessed to the realisation of ideas and concepts, when it is fit for purpose and inventive within its means.

To this end, the viewer of the work benefits from a capacity to interpret and ‘read’ the drawing, and to bring their own experience and understanding of language and perception to each drawing they see, be it a measured objective or realist drawing, an invented scene of the imagination, a proposition for the three-dimensional realisation of a design, a decoration, a symbol, or a sketch of emergent ideas. This ‘literacy’ or fluency in visual language needs to be ensured and to be developed, nurtured, enhanced and challenged as an equivalently important means of communication to the predominance of verbal and written communication in our educational systems and cultures.

Uses of drawing vary enormously, ranging from limbs marked with dotted lines and arrows indicating what is proposed to happen in the absence of spoken confirmation under anaesthetic in operating theatres to road-markings which define for us the rules and regulations of driving, to street-finders and ordnance survey maps which indicate the route and nature of journeys, road signs, underground maps, lines which tell us how to open packets, lines which define a football pitch, marks or signs which tell us what way up to store something, signs which declare poison, pictures which tell us what is being transported, the graphic language of advertising, product design information, safety guides in aircraft, cartoons in the newspaper, product branding, coats of arms, logos – in fact all those images that don’t require verbal or written translation. These images and information-bearing signs transcend the barriers of different languages and enhance communication in an increasingly global world.

Images teased from raw materials, reveal the choices and decisions made when drawing, and consequently encapsulate and define the thinking process behind the act. The enduring history of adjustment and adaptation within drawings informs the reading of the final image; and through the act of drawing we are not only left a trace of the physical act but the trace of the thinking process, as images or marks are made manifest, and evidently expose decisions, indecisions and indiscretions of this thinking ‘out loud’. The ‘touch’ or imprint of a mark reveals whether it was made at speed, slowly, angrily, with love, with force, tentatively, ‘stuttering-ly’, gently, or as a notation, by an individual, personally or through printed or animated reproduction. The materials used to make the marks, and the surface on which the marks are made also inform us, not just about the period and timescale in which a drawing was made but the intention at the outset and any modification of this intention as the drawing has progressed.

The range and growth of drawing initiatives can be seen as a significant and collective defence of drawing in all its pluralities. For example, the Jerwood Drawing Prize has been developed as a forum to test, evaluate and disseminate current drawing practice and to encompass and inform debates in education and in current practice. The array of exhibitions, projects, courses and organisations committed to research and practice in drawing in the United Kingdom has exponentially grown in number over the last decade. Having collectively raised the game and placed drawing back on the agenda – in schools, universities, in teaching and research, galleries and contemporary practices – perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the specific function of drawing at a point when maybe it has become consumed as a product to be marketed and as such has lost a central focus of its function. Clearly artists and designers will seek to define within their own practice whether there is a lucid distinction for them between drawing and their other activities through practice.

From my perspective, having seen over 20,000 drawings go through the Jerwood Drawing Prize selection process with 36 different selectors since 1994, and having listened to and participated in concentrated debate over the nature of contemporary drawing practice, the danger might be that one is left with a clear impression that drawing can be anything. This has the constituent problem that if drawing is everything, then it is also nothing – or at least nothing special.

I would propose that the informality of drawing has perhaps been subsumed, or at least incorporated, into a more formal re-presentation of other objectives. This lack of informality may be something that allows for an apparently wider freedom and perhaps all distinctions being blurred gives credibility to even the most insignificant mark masquerading as spontaneity. Hopefully this isn’t the case, and that genuine creativity resides in a more complete investigation of purpose.

The constant need to consume something new has threatened some deeply held values, and it has become apparent over the years that drawing tradition itself has become increasingly marginalised as it opens itself up to new market forces. While contemporary drawing responds to a broad, ‘boundary-busting’ remit it is essential to remember that critical development also needs to be applied to drawings clearly within those boundaries. Titian’s drawings are both little known and rare. For him they were a means to an end. Perhaps we should lament this lack of self-consciousness from an artist such as Titian who touched the surface of his paper in order to investigate an elusive world just beyond his reach. For him, drawing embodied knowledge not style.

The chapters that follow in this book declare the territory of drawing as a rigorous and distinctive aspect of creative practice in art and design. Drawing and the debate around and through drawing is very much alive, very much on the agenda and very much in need of this deepening and developing framework within which to evaluate, disseminate and elevate the purpose and function of drawing. This framework needs to be located and re-positioned so as to support a critical examination of the terms of engagement within the field, and the discourse within it, through written, verbal and most essentially, visual means.

‘a great drawing is either confirming beautifully what is commonplace, or probing authoritatively the unknown.’

Brett Whiteley (1939–1992), Tangiers Notebook 1967.

Professor Anita Taylor is Dean of Wimbledon College of Art and Director of The Centre for Drawing, University of the Arts London and The Jerwood Drawing Prize Project.

INTRODUCTION

Steve Garner

Drawing today is characterised by diversity. While this is healthy it also hinders the emergence of drawing as a distinctive domain. Drawing practice and drawing research are increasingly viewed as symbiotic. Traditional boundaries, such as between art and design, have been eroded. Today drawing is of interest to communities in computer science, history, psychology and education as well as the fine arts. But if drawing is to emerge as a distinct domain those who operate within it need somehow to document its corpus of knowledge. In short we need a map: to chart relationships between disparate drawing fields, to facilitate communication, to suggest the borders where the drawing world abuts the worlds of other disciplines, and to suggest where we might or should explore.

This collection of invited essays emerged from my dissatisfaction with this mapping process. Like the maps of the early cartographers the attempts at representing the world of drawing have reflected less about what we know and more about what we don’t know. Some phenomena have been mapped better than others. The study of drawings made by children is more mature when compared to, say, the study of drawing within computer-mediated team working. Partly this is because the former has a longer history but the study of children’s drawings has also benefited from contributions from a broad range of disciplines. Creative tensions have given rise to rigour in methodology and specificity in language. Consequently, our maps of the world of drawing vary in their level of detail, and often fail to reveal relationships between islands of knowledge.

In planning and editing this collection I have attempted to chart a complex drawing world – a complexity compounded by a desire to combine writings on drawing practice with writings on drawing research. Where possible I have sought contributions from people who consider themselves (and in some cases they have an international reputation as) both drawing makers and drawing researchers. Just like the cartographers, I have had to wrestle with the need to represent a domain characterised by diversity. In this collection some land is necessarily left unmapped, and some detail sacrificed in the search for a bigger picture.

In my own chapter I raise the question ‘what is drawing research?’ and some answers are embedded in the various contributions to this book. Deanna Petherbridge reveals why a search for definitions is an understandable but ultimately frustrating occupation for drawing researchers. Her expert dissection using contemporary and historical examples provides some much-needed footings enabling researchers to improve their engagement in the subject. Ernst van Alphen approaches the subject of definitions obliquely, seeking to characterise the plurality rather than define singularities. His close analysis of the writings and drawings of key thinkers of the twentieth century illustrates what the acts and outputs of drawing can mean. Stephen Farthing’s chapter concerns the neglected capacity of drawing for representing the world as the maker sees and/or imagines it. Flexibility in our notions of accuracy can stimulate new drawing and new insight.

As Angela Anning reminds us good drawing research today stands on the shoulders of past work. Her own chapter charts some landmark studies of children’s drawings as the foundation for her own work, but there is also a well-placed warning about accepting too readily the features and priorities of the domain charted in the research maps of others. And what of methodology? Richard Talbot is one of the few contributors here to offer an analysis of his own drawing process. He avoids the trap of self-indulgence, comparing his concerns for representation with those of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Angela Eames bases her chapter on an interview. She reveals how illuminating dialogue and post-interview analysis can be. Terry Rosenberg’s contribution similarly features a central subject, but this time preceded by a personal construct concerning creative thinking. Anna Ursyn and Howard Riley demonstrate an important synergy between research and education. Both illustrate their chapters with examples of student work in various media. James Faure Walker reflects on commercial advertising from the early twentieth century, but in doing so he inspires us to reconsider principles and practices of drawing today.

Drawing research is alive and well. Along with drawing practice it is changing and evolving. They are what drawing makers and drawing researchers make them into. And that’s the point of this book. It is supposed to be stimulating and challenging. It is supposed to highlight common ground whilst celebrating differences. It presents an appeal to contribute to a better understanding of drawing. The authors in this book seek to inspire others to contribute to moulding this emergent domain through research, practice or both, whether this be mapping a small section of our metaphorical coastline or reconstructing our atlas.

If drawing research is to be recognized as a distinct domain, one that operates across the perceived but outdated divide between enquiry and practice, one that has its own robust and flexible methodology, one with its own knowledge base, then there is much to be done. A map is the first prerequisite.

1

TOWARDS A CRITICAL DISCOURSE IN DRAWING RESEARCH

Steve Garner

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about drawing research. I think about it when I’m drawing and I think about it when I’m researching. And there’s the rub. What are the characteristics of drawing research that distinguish it from the broad phenomena of drawing and research? If there is to exist a drawing research community, what activities do we engage in that distinguish us from those engaged in the many manifestations of drawing and other types of creative practice? Do we claim a distinct knowledge base, is it an issue of approach or method or do we think about drawing differently? What types of outputs might a drawing researcher generate; drawings, writings, both, something else? This chapter takes the form of an enquiry. It offers many questions and few answers but in doing so it seeks to begin a consolidation of a foundation for drawing research. It acknowledges that drawing research is a very young, some might say immature, discipline. It would be too ambitious for one chapter to seek to bring any maturity to the discipline but it does appeal for the drawing research community to look up into the middle distance to identify what might be done through our work and our discussions to bring about a maturity. One group of related questions that inspired this piece concern the desirability or otherwise of an agenda for drawing research, and of what such an agenda might consist. This has not proved straightforward to address. It’s clear that people who make drawings, or those with an interest in the drawing outputs and processes of others, have their own personal motivations. Some of these say they have no need for a broader articulation of a drawing agenda. Perhaps they are suspicious of anything that might work to suppress their personal creativity, insight or uniqueness. But is an agenda merely a crutch for those who cannot formulate their own research enquiry? I offer an alternative perspective. The definition of possible agenda items has, for me, become an important objective but perhaps even more important, as preparation, is the stimulation of a critical discourse that embraces the notion of an agenda for drawing research. So this chapter is concerned as much with critical discourse as an agenda. However, I do offer some thoughts on a possible agenda. One that is flexible rather than prescriptive, one that facilitates dialogue and constructive comparisons across diverse activities, an agenda that might assist the construction of a shared knowledge base of, for example, issues, principles, priorities and working methods of drawing research.

Drawing and research

When I first became interested in drawing research, as a postgraduate student in the early 1980s, I rather naively identified two communities. I saw drawing makers – artists, designers, scientists and many others – who made drawings for a variety of reasons. I also identified a group of people who studied these outputs – perhaps so as to distil their functionality and to incorporate this into curricula for schools or colleges of art (as they invariably were in those days). The publications of the time on drawing seemed to reinforce this basic categorisation; the many ‘how to’ books offering step-by-step guidance on developing drawing skills were clearly (to me anyway) outputs of the drawing makers and while the outputs of the drawing study-ers were more diverse including exhibition catalogues, books and papers on, for example, art therapy, anthropology and studies of children’s drawing, they were clearly (again, in my mind) not written by drawing makers. In 1982 I came across a book by William Kirby Lockard¹ who set out to explain ‘why’ designers draw as well as ‘how’ they draw. Immediately I became aware of an entirely different paradigm for drawing research within which thinking about drawing and thinking through drawing exhibited relationships that I hadn’t previously considered. Once thinking had taken centre stage, a raft of earlier publications dealing with relationships between perception, conception and representation made more sense including Rawson’s seminal text simply titled Drawing,² Arnheim’s Visual Thinking³ and going back to Ruskin’s The Elements of Drawing.⁴

Today a more extensive drawing research community exists but we still wrestle with the relationship between drawing and research. In the twenty-first century we find ourselves building drawing research on a foundation of understanding laid down over several centuries by painters, architects, critics, natural scientists, social scientists, historians and social reformers amongst many others. In 1989 David Thistlewood noted the ‘extraordinary diversity of research activities in the field of drawing which have been taking place mainly (though not only) in Europe, North America and Australia over several decades’.⁵ But what use are we making of our accumulating research culture? Does it inform our new contributions? Very few people, if any, working more that fifty years ago would have thought to refer to their work as ‘drawing research’. They may have said they were drawing; they may have said they were researching; they might even have said, as Leonardo did, that they were searching through drawing,⁶ but the term ‘drawing research’ is relatively new. Is drawing also drawing research? Well the simple, but not particularly helpful, answer is yes and no. Some drawing activity is intended