Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice - Drawing and Knowledge, Apr 2024

Today’s scientists depend on advanced imaging and microscopy techniques as scientifically accurate forms of representation and developments in advanced imaging and microscopy are altering how we perceive and comprehend images. The focus of this paper is a discussion of how images of scientific data are generated by artists in distinction to scientists. Since 2010, a central part of my drawing practice has involved contributing to advanced imaging and microscopy research projects. I wanted to discover if and how an artist-researcher can contribute to interdisciplinary approaches in advanced imaging and microscopy by working as one of the research team. I conducted research to find out how an artist-researcher might contribute to new interdisciplinary methods in advanced imaging and microscopy and introduced play as a disruptive concept to trigger a reactionary response to scientific method. Discussion centres on a collaboration at the University of Nottingham Medical School in the Department of Life Science which happened over several years. The drawings illustrate how non-standard visualization techniques complement biomedical data. In outline, I suggest artists should be given access to scientific labs and work with scientists as part of the team to break down disciplinary barriers, and to generate new understanding. This body of work aims to elevate drawings status as a meaningful contributor to cross-disciplinary collaboration.

From 1974 until 2014 the British Artist Roger Ackling made drawings on found pieces of driftwood by using the sun’s rays focused through a magnifying glass. This research article discusses the contribution Ackling made to charting an ontology of drawing through a practice of stillness. By employing this method, he provides an original contribution to the knowledge base of drawing that values ephemerality and lightness through phenomenological bracketing. An evaluation is provided as to how Roger Ackling dwells upon and makes subject the precise moment of making in drawing.

Drawing evokes notions of mark-making on a surface. This paper explores an immersive and fluid kind of mark-making that originates beneath the surface, gradually emerging to reveal what is going on at a deeper level more specifically under the sea. Immersive mark-making arises from below in the form of undercurrents, generating ripples that progressively and delicately make their way up as they glimmer and reflect the light penetrating the surface of the water. Hand gestures contribute to fluid movements that form tiny, frothy bubbles, each containing a reflective space awaiting to be explored and delved into. The fleeting bubbles are so delicate and elusive that their elegant movement can hardly be absorbed by the naked eye. A camera is needed to catch these special moments lasting only a few seconds and which can never be replicated. The current set of immersive charcoal drawings documents the result of swift mark-making gestures below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea captured by a submerged action camera. What the collection of photographs reveals is a universe made of miniscule worlds, drifting and rolling in a playful unchoreographed manner before vanishing into thin air. The poetic passage, both agitated and graceful, allows for drawing in water. It comprises shapes and rhythms, light and darkness, shifts and stillness, aspects we rarely have the time to reflect upon. The ensuing discussion presents the findings emanating from beneath by bringing to the surface of the paper the liquid cosmos generated by drawing in water.

This text reports about my practice-based doctoral research project exploring the question ‘How can the relationships between self and the outdoor environment of Bakestonedale Moor manifest in a creative arts practice from drawing and installation?’. I have developed a drawing and installation practice as the bearer and expression of my relationship with the outdoor places of the British Peak District in the vicinity of Pott Shrigley. This led to the development of the ‘mobile working kit’, a collection of modules fashioned from paper, string, wood and fabric, which I use to make drawings and mark the land with sculptural additions. My outdoor art-making events may only last a few hours but I later exhibit its artefacts as indoor art displays complemented by photographs and videos from the outdoor sites. I provide descriptions of two drawing activities outdoors, first, using a three-dimensional fence-like paper sculpture as a drawing surface and, second, drawing on a ground-based paper platform. These examples of art-making are then contextualized in reference to Barad’s concept of intra-activity where material changes in the world are understood to occur in co-constitutional negotiation of all active components. I use this concept and Barad’s understanding of performativity to describe process in art-making and in geological, meteorological and biological changes outdoors. I then relate these positions to current performance drawing in reference to the role of the artist and how the arts practice determines her connection to the outdoor environment.

Drawing has long been established as a conversational tool, as notation passed between individuals or with larger groups to create an evidence trail of ideas. There is a fascinating sociality to the activity, finding parallels with the dynamics of a conversation, as artists enter similar cycles of inspection, re-conception and re-examination, pushing ideas forward, asserting focus and altering original intentions. The MAA/Ground Residency offered the opportunity to examine this sociality on a more nuanced level, by applying approaches commonly used in the practice of oral history, to devise a model of drawing that can sensitize participants to the nature of human interaction and explore the ‘smaller stories’ contained in the details of shared experiences. The following report maps the first stages of this study from initial interaction with the site of the residency at Niemelä house, E. Finland, and onto a series of drawing conversations with its attendees. The results start to show how, as a particular field of the visual arts, the drawing process can be shaped by situated ‘small talk’, reflected in equivalent hesitancies and utterances in emerging and growing ideas, and in turn, how narrative analysis can be used to interpret and explore the sociality of drawing taking place.

This paper aims to demonstrate the value of traditional observation hand-drawing as a contemporary teaching approach to develop skills such as creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, empathy and cooperation. It is well known that drawing activity possesses unique cognitive characteristics that contribute to critical thought and problem-solving and can positively impact the emotional self. However, it is difficult to demonstrate that traditional observational hand-drawing applies in all these ways. On the contrary, there is an associated mistrust of observational drawing in the past, due to difficulties, for many students, in learning such skills capable of generating emotional distress, which in part justifies this research article. Another purpose is to explain the benefits of observational hand-drawing in fields dominated by digital media, like architecture. Using the example of the faculty of architecture at the University of Oporto, Portugal, where drawing from observation is successfully taught as an indispensable basis for pursuing a degree in architecture, we analysed the four types of exercises in its foundational programme of drawing study to inquire about which mental skills it mobilizes in students, using Seymour Simmon's model of drawing typology to frame the discussion. At the same time, we will provide a test board for his theory and argue that hand-drawing exclusively from observation in a teaching scenario facilitates the approach to complex subjects and trains crucial cognitive skills.