We are off to an interesting start this session creating hybrid animals. We are also learning about rendering a drawing/drawn idea into a different media.
We started by experimenting with tracing paper and photo's of animals to mash up some creatures, and as a starting point for inspiration and consideration. While not necessarily teaching us the importance of eye-to-hand drawing, I think tracing can teach us a lot about looking, and what 'drawing' really means to us. Also, trying to transfer a 'realistic' image-trying to capture an index or 'realism' of an image, with tracing paper is a very quick and useful tool that turns us into a kind of human photocopier or even emotional printer. Much like a camera might give us an illusion of objectivity, a tracing can give us an illusion of accuracy, opening up other channels of engagement in creative mark-making--perhaps asking us to re-locate our considerations of what a drawing should be.
We all got very excited about the accuracy, and the failed accuracy, in our work, and we all accepted our work as a kind of copying exercise - learning that we are taking & making selections from existing material - and then discovered that there was more we could do, and were inspired to do, to make the work our own. So tracing can offer a really good experience in understanding where we copy things, why 'accuracy' may or may not be the most important signifier to our work, and where we invent and innovate. We will continue with transparencies, adapt something from our original tracing, and create a 3-D mask invention along side this process to see what connects.
We are not taking tracing lightly. I'll give a bit more thought to Artists we can look at.
