22 April 2008
Cook Inlet panorama : pictures and numbers
Been thinking more about different ways of looking at a landscape, as part of the preparation for the Alaska job. The traditional concerns are about rendering volume and distance. Completely explained in the fabulous Father Ted Series 2 Part 1 : Hell written by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan. Ted tries to explain the difference between a real cow and a toy one :
Ted : (Holding a toy cow in front of Dougal) ”Dougal, this cow is small. (points out of the window) Those ones are far away. Small … Far away.”
Genius. And everything you ever needed to know about linear perspective. Rendering distance by modulating tones (lighter = far away) and bending contours (converging on the horizon = far away). These are the obvious problems but not the most interesting ones. Let’s see if we can find drawn marks or descriptors for the moving, fluid and unstable bits of the landscape :
- Change (multiple alterations through time)
- Flow (soft through soft or soft around hard)
- Abrasion (hard into soft)
It’s lucky that change, flow and abrasion are also built into the uncertain process of drawing itself, whether you want them to be or not.
- Change by erasing and moving a mark but leaving the trace, pentimenti
- Flow by changes in direction and weighting of mark
- Abrasion by attacking the actual drawn surface, giving it a history
I’m rather uncomfortable with this kind of theoretical stuff, but I so often have no idea what I’m doing till I hear myself telling somebody about it. It’s also been partly provoked by a really interesting book about painting that I read and re read just now : ”What painting is” by James Elkins. A lot of it confused me, which is no bad thing, but it did a wonderful job of trying to talk in the language of paint. I’m trying to ask similar questions here about drawing I suppose. Drawing is the most accurate and sensitive way of recording look-decisions. Often it’s too accurate when the looks aren’t careful and the drawing is going badly. The limitation is that these decisions can only be recorded a a sequence, basically because I can’t think and draw more than one thing at a time. I want to know if I can wire up the drawing process differently - wire it up in parallel instead of in series.
Numbers can do that. Can a drawing ?
(1) 22 April 2008 at 10:10 pm
James Elkins
Hi,
Thanks for that. I’m working now on a companion book, “What Photography Is.” Of course it’s nothing about oil, but it is about textures, because photographs also have those. And photographs have surfaces, although most people ignore them…
(2) 23 April 2008 at 8:33 am
doug
Surfaces and textures - that’s an interestingly counter intuitive place to start talking about photography.
Seems to me that photography and painting often share the same unrequited love affair with ’seeming’ which is a form of denial about the painted or photographic surface. I’d be really interested to be kept in touch with this work you are doing.
For me the starting point is lenses rather than the photographic emulsion. Lenses go back to Vermeer and beyond and have presented strong magnetic fields that have sometimes given dodgy readings on the painters own compass.
Anyway - I’ll report back on progress in Anchorage in the blog.
(3) 23 April 2008 at 9:06 am
steve
Maybe we ignore textures so much because we are pattern-seeking animals (hence the love affair with ’seeming’). We constantly try to make sense of the chaos of information around us. This makes us see faces in fires and animals in clouds and, at the sinister end of the spectrum, leads to religion and semiotics.
Our brains are hard-wired to extract meaning from confluences of lines & colours. We may only see surface when our normal processing is disrupted or yields insufficient data (eg, the image is too abstract) and the mind seeks additional information. Perhaps also when our normal information-gathering routines are disrupted, such as your vertical panoramas.
(4) 23 April 2008 at 9:25 am
doug
I love the way you put religion and semiotics together to argue it out while the rest of us don’t have to listen. However, as a lefty I would like to take issue with your pejorative use of the word sinister. Ask Jimi and Leonardo (not diCaprio).
(5) 8 May 2008 at 9:50 am
Piutrar
I love the vibrations of numbers and hence the textures they are, the semiotics can also be defined in terms of numbers as all energy vibrates and communicates with us.
Sinister only becomes sinister in your mind caused by a negative or positive take on the the vibration it makes for you. I’m a lefty too.
You can wire your mind to draw in parallel. You are living in a linear world where you have given yourself the limitation to limit yourself to those three dimensions. Take a quantum step and ask for the insight to see it differently.
Newton, Da Vinci, Einstein, Mozart, Beethoven, Eddison, Picasso all did…
(6) 8 May 2008 at 10:03 am
doug
Puitrar - thanks very much for the comment. “ask for the insight to see it differently” - if I have a job description I guess I’m in the “see it differently” business.
How did you arrive at my blog ?
Right at the moment I’m also getting ready for the Alaska project (packing brushes, etc etc.) but had a really interesting conversation over the weekend with someone who is writing a book about patterns. Given that he had worked with Keith Critchlow and met Buckminster Fuller I’m very excited to see how that develops. I’ll also report back on the challenge to draw in parallel .. More later - please keep in touch.