#drawingasagame

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Drawing as a Game

Our in class drawing activity for what turned out to be our last day of class together involved a deck of cards that I made as a drawing generating device. 

While the main theme of our learning this semester, learning to trust our own eyes and use the power of observation in our art making, is incredibly important, many contemporary artists exploring drawing from other conceptual directions. In the hands of many contemporary practitioners drawings become ways to think, or structural devices to play, explore and experiment. Drawings become a way of telling the story of an idea instead of a description of a particular observable subject.

Rather than sharing the results of the drawing game activity from class, I am including this information from the vantage point of the score of particular cards that generated the drawings we did together. Are these images drawings? Why or why not?

Thanks for playing along with me!

Images above, from top:

the drawing as a game deck

drawing as a game 1 score from Monday December 

drawing as a game 2 score

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Exquisite Corpse Thanksgiving Quarantine Edition aka Drawing as a Game 2020

Exquisite Corpse is a drawing game devised by surrealist artists that remains popular with artists today. 

Here is how it works:

One artist takes a sheet of paper and folds it into equal sections based on how many artists are participating (It can be as few as 2 or as many as you can fit on the paper!) The drawing paper is smoothed out and the first artist player draws whatever they would like in the top section, allowing the lines to cross the crease by a few millimeters. The drawing paper is then refolded back on this crease to conceal the drawing and is passed to the next artist who begins their own drawing from these initial lines. The process continues until the last section is completed and the full collaborative drawing is revealed.

Your assignment for week 14: Do your own version of an exquisite corpse drawing.

I was originally planning for us to try this as a drawing class community. However, I do not have a complete list of addresses for everyone, so I’ve revised the assignment to be something you do with your thanksgiving quarantine community. (I kinda like this idea better anyway!!)

Here is the plan:

Choose one or more people who you are quarantining with for Thanksgiving and make a drawing together using the exquisite corpse drawing method described above. 

Post a picture of your final drawing on your blog. 

Use the hashtag #exquisitecorpse to make your post easy to identify. Thats it!(Please do your best to get a good image of your drawing.)

Please watch the video above for some artist inspiration by artist Hugo Croshwaite which he did for his contribution to PBS’s The Art Assignment video series. 

Here is a link a short post about Exquisite Corpse on artsy.

Images from top:

collaborative drawing by Julia Barbee and Megan Schvaneveldt

youtube video by The Art Assignment with artist Hugo Croshwaite

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Drawing Game

Here is the image of our drawing game score from the drawing game deck and the results of your exploration of drawing as a games.

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Drawing Inspiration: Steve Roden

Steve Roden is a visual and sound artist whose work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, text and performance. 

Here is his art statement, how he chooses to articulate his art practice:

“I work with painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, text, sound and performance—generally exploring ideas related to translation, abstraction, systems, notation and scores.

My working process generally includes the translation of various forms of specific notation (words, musical scores, maps, etc.) into scores, which influence the process of making/composing a painting, drawing, sculpture, or sound composition. The scores, rigid in terms of their structure, are also full of holes—allowing for intuitive actions, mistakes, and potential left turns. Other than its relationship to an inspirational source, I seldom know how an artwork will speak until it is finished.

My practice is still rooted in the principals I learned in the fourth grade when an art teacher, Mr. Johnstone, told me to fix the sky in the background of a watercolor project. I told him I liked it as it was and wanted to leave it. He told me if I fixed it to his liking he would give me an A, and if not he would give me a C. I kept the sky the way I wanted and took the C. To this day, I still believe that a C with meaning is much more valuable than an A through compromise. The watercolor is hanging in my studio.”

Images above:

a variety of drawings and paintings by Steve Roden. Learn more about Steve by checking out his page on his gallery website, linked here.

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Drawing as a Game: Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse is a drawing game devised by surrealist artists that remains popular with artists today. 

Here is how it works: 

Each artist received a sheet of paper and folds it into equal sections based on how many artists are participating. The sheets are smoothed out and each player draws whatever they would like in the top section, allowing the lines to cross the crease by a few millimeters. This sheet is then refolded back on this crease to conceal the drawing and is passed to the next artist who begins their drawing from these intial lines. The process continues until the last section is completed and the full collaborative drawing is revealed.

Here is a link a short post about Exquisite Corpse on artsy.

Images from top:

collaborative drawing by Julia Barbee and Megan Schvaneveldt

collaborative drawing by Jake and Dinos Chapman called Exquisite Corpse (Rotring Club) I, 2000

collaborative drawing by surrealist artists in 1928, specifically: Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky), André Breton, Yves Tanguy, and Max Morise,