Intro
In December my wife suddenly turns to me and says 'do you
want to abstain from alcohol in January and raise money for Mind?' I looked at
her with my best Paddington stare as I processed the question. Of course, I
could do such a thing, easily. In fact I was so certain that I could, the whole
venture seemed, somewhat pointless - just a lot of trouble really. But it was
apparent that it wouldn't cut the mustard to proclaim 'of course I could,
there's no point in even considering it'. I knew I'd have to, if only to prove
I'm not a dependent. So I said with a sigh "Oh, alright then".
Thus it was, I came to have a little more time on my hands.
So throughout January 2014 I found my self spending a lot of time doodling on
my iPhone with an App called Adobe Ideas. This app allows you to load a
photograph as a base to draw against, which can later be removed. A tracing app
in fact. I found myself learning to draw round things. I'm not actually very
good at drawing as perhaps my very first sketch (shown here) will testify.
Validity
These early sketches
are without question really very badly executed. This is pretty poor
considering they're only tracings. I really am that bad at drawing. But they do
have a certain charm and humour to them, so I persevered - secretly enjoying
the enterprise even though it was kind of childish in its execution. I posted
them up on my Facebook 'wall' and they attracted a steady stream of 'likes' -
enough to spur me on (you should know, I never need very much encouragement to
act childishly). By the fifth sketch I got 13 likes and 11 comments with people
actually asking to be my next victim.
So I thought, perhaps there is some 'artistic merit' in
exercising this simple mechanical skill. The thought sat uncomfortably with me -
in the same way as I'm not too keen on taking photographs of graffiti. It seems
like all you're doing is ripping off someone else's creative vision - unless you
somehow bring something new to the story.
Joy & Donations
So the next thing I did was to post a status update offering
to provide a sketch for anyone who felt like being visually insulted. That
posting brought 24 willing victims forward with requests like:
Go on then. I'll be your next guinea pig (victim)
I do Ant. Need a laugh x
Do your worst mate.
but you gotta find a really bad picture of
me..
fuck yes.
My ego craves it.
memememememe!! I wanna HATE the results!!
oh yeah! She says nervously...
Make me hate myself.
I did as many of these as I possibly could, but there were
so many of them coming at me so thick and so fast that I felt I was back in
India surrounded by beggars smothering me in respect and honour. I had to close
the offer, but still the requests kept coming. It got really quite intense. On
the 7th of January alone I did 9 sketches (well tracings) of folk. And you
know, they were actually improving.
On the 10th, 1/3rd of the way through the month I reminded
everyone I was going dry and raising money for Mind. I repeated my offer to
sketch folk, but this time in return for a donation. I raised well over £20 for
Mind by doing not-totally-crap sketches of people. That's a good thing.
So while struggling philosophically with the idea there may
(or may not) be any artistic merit in drawing round things dozens of people
were queuing up for a turn, sharing good-willed banter and donating money to a
worthy charity. That sealed it really, I was definitely learning something of
worth and value here.
Juxtapositions and Transitionals
But as the skill improved the raw charm of the early pieces
was certainly diminished, so I started to think about how I could make this mechanical
skill of tracing a valid expressive form going forward. I think there's a few
key approaches that mean a tracing can
be considered a valid new work, despite being inherently based on some
pre-existing work. I.e.:
- by derivation; once
the tracing is complete it can be adapted by adding entirely imaged components.
In fact this is exactly what I did in my very first attempt ("Hello
Humans"), by adding the body to the character on the right.
- by juxtaposing tracings of different things that cannot,
or do not, occur together; the components of the resulting image are 'mere
mechanical copies' of some other work but the overall piece is unquestionably a
new message, story, artwork. The image of a spaceman (from a photo in the
Science Museum) and post box (from a snap taking on route to work) is a
striking example.
- by origination, creating
the base image to be traced, specifically for the tracing not as a completed
work in its own right, the tracing becomes the prima facie artwork. In the
'tube commute' example here the originating photograph was of poor quality and
in itself intrinsically uninteresting. The tracing lends a quality of
abstraction that helps cohere the composition. In essence, an image that works
as a tracing but which does not work as a photograph.
- by control of detail; the conscious decisions of exactly
which lines to put into the tracing and which to leave out. As the tracings become
more and more detailed these decisions represent the 'zen' of the process and
the tracer knows internally whether the result validly represents a genuinely
new take on the artwork, or not.
So the process of tracing involves conscious compositional
and narrative decisions, pure joy and unquestionable communication - all facets
of successful artistic endeavour. Thus I was happy this childish skill is worth all of the effort it takes to
execute and does represent a valid
artistic endeavour. That's when I became obsessive in the execution.
Art & Obsession
I have long thought that good art involves deep obsession.
For a time an artwork has to consume you with intense concentration to the
exclusion of other concerns - be that an hour or a year. If the work fails to
achieve that in the artist during execution, then what hope does it really have
to engage anyone else? Certainly this belief is borne out in my later tracing
works.
All these works have been produced by finger-tracing on a
tiny iPhone screen. The concentration is somewhat excessive (note to reader,
the iPad version of the app certainly makes life a lot easier).
To really exercise the mechanical skill, whilst working
through the foregoing philosophical questions, I started working with highly
complex multi-figure scenes, famous classical art works and finely detailed
insects. All of this culminated in a sketch comprising 43 individual scenes:
Having produced this 'opus' in around 8 hours I sat back and
considered the work of the past 25 days which amounted to just over 50 sketches - the
full series cn be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWqUXarFoSQ
I firmly believe that I've learnt both a new skill and a new (to me) form of artistic expression in a little under a month. Proof perhaps that you can teach an old dog new tricks. For the last word on the 'validity' question, look-out for issue 9 of The Black Light Engine Room; not only is it a great poetry anthology magazine but this issue's covers are examples of my sketching. Which is nice.
Oh, and Dennis Just Dennis (Poet) is using one in his upcoming book. which is also nice. Very nice.
Oh, and with my team of fellow abstainers (Christine, Calm
Carl and Sarah-Jane) we raised well over £600 for Mind. A good dry January.
