Drawing has always formed a large part of my practice, it is an element that spans every part of a project. Working with line drawing allows me to create pieces full of character, sweeping lines twist back on themselves, free and full of movement. I feel that line can describe motion and fluidity, especially when it has been drawn quickly, blindly, swoopingly.
I’ve been reading Bento’s Sketchbook by John Berger in which he discusses his use of drawing and what it allows him to do. I have written out some quotes from the book alongside the drawings in this post.
Some reasons to draw are obvious – to show an idea, to work through something, to give it a solid representation, a description that couldn’t be matched with words. I draw in order to put an idea down, so that I can come back to it later.
What am I doing when I draw? Am I making an accurate representation? Why not take a photo then?
There is something about drawing that allows you to understand something better, to see an object more clearly.
What do I feel when I draw?
Often when drawing I reach a meditative state, one where I don’t feel time passing as normal.
But sometimes you labour through a drawing, and every line seems wrong, nothing comes out the way it should do.
Often with those drawings you just need time – coming back to look at them the next day you realise there is something within them that you missed, and the drawing looks completely different.
The sound of the pencil or the pen, the sound of the the scratching on the paper, or brushing the flecks of rubber off.
Lines, coming together to make shapes, to make forms, to describe the movement and the character, or half finished ideas.
The softness of pencil allows you to see half lines.
Pen is so crisp, nothing is a shade of grey
Do the lines come into existence in my head or on the paper?
With the steel they already exist, I bend them to my will.
There are no half lines in steel. But it leaves half marks, rust patches, dents.
I remember things I draw
I understand things I draw
I draw to show ideas
I draw to take those ideas into myself
I draw to make an idea or a figure or a shape permanent
I draw in steel to make it even more so.
Agnes Jones Art Blacksmith 