Discipline and daily focus
This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date.
OCA tutor Bryan Eccleshall has been doing a drawing a day since the start of the year and posting the results online. As January ends, he reflects on the motivations and results of the activity.
“I resolved, on January 1st, to make 365 drawings over the length of 2013. I didn’t think too hard about the consequences of that decision, but went public on Facebook. Several other people I know, or half-know, were also embarking on year-long projects, which acted as a spur. The drawings I planned to make would be in addition to my normal practice and would, therefore, require finding extra time in my schedule in order to generate the work. 
“Process based work has always held a fascination for me as it can remove, or at least displace, the idea of ‘inspiration’ and replace it with an idea of ‘labour’. Much process-driven work comes out of the Conceptual Art of the late 1960s; people like On Kawara who set themselves absurd, but attainable goals. Since January 4, 1966 Kawara has made a long series of “Date paintings” […] which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in simple white lettering set against a solid background. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Kawara#Today_series (accessed 3rd February 2013)). What have I been up to? Because I wanted the drawings to add up to something – rather than simply be a pile of extra work – I looked around the corners of my practice for something to use as a common theme. This would act as an architecture on which to metaphorically hang the work. For years I’ve been taking photographs in galleries and museums, but not of the art. I take surreptitious shots of light fittings, chairs, skirting boards, signage, polished wooden floors, plinths and so on, when invigilators’ backs are turned. In short, all of the stuff that surrounds the work, but isn’t the work. (This relates to Derrida’s essay on the Parregon in The Truth In Painting. Derrida, Jacques (1978), The Truth In Painting, translated by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)). I then turn these images into black and white square photographs. I don’t consider them to be particularly meaningful in any way, or myself to be a photographer (though I do spend time cropping them to make interesting compositions). However, something happens when you keep pulling at a particular thread and I began to be intrigued by these little pictures. They seemed ideal subjects for a series of small drawings. Some were complex and some very simple, so I could pick and choose different images depending on the time available to me. As they were already monochrome, drawing seemed an obvious way to reiterate them. I am, at the moment, working on a PhD in which I employ drawing as a way of remaking the work of other art works. Reiteration fascinates me as it builds a bridge back to a source, while acknowledging the gap and creating something new. While this new idea didn’t exactly fit in with that. It would act as ‘training’, if nothing else. I also had a hunch that they’d look good, which is never to be discounted. How have I been doing it? The process of making is kept as simple as possible. The materials I’ve used are as follows:
“A cheap propelling pencil, which saves the hassle of sharpening, and means that there’s always a point. For larger drawings, this wouldn’t be appropriate as coverage takes ages, but these are small drawings (120mm x 120mm), so it’s not a problem.
“A selection of erasers. I am becoming something of a connoisseur of erasers. Each removes the marks differently and some are great for smudging or polishing the marks. Pushing and pulling the pencil marks on the surface of the paper gives the act of drawing a relation to painting. Although I do use lines to build up structure, they are often removed and replaced with contrasting blocks of tone. I don’t use shading as a form of ‘colouring in’, but rather as a way of building objects and planes in relation to one another.
“A tortillon. This a small rolled up stub of paper which can produce uniform greys and soften the marks of the pencil. It can also, when grubby, be used to make smudgy marks in its own right. A crucial piece of kit. I’ve augmented the paper tortillon with a ‘colour shaper’. This looks like a paintbrush but has a rubber wedge instead of bristles. It’s primarily meant for moving acrylic paint around, but can make fine graphite lines, too. 
“The paper is a smooth, creamy, cartridge. It allows me to make very subtle gradations of tone as well as holding detail easily. For larger drawings, I tend to use something with a bit of ‘tooth’ and hefty graphite sticks.
“This is all supported by a large clipboard. The drawings are all the same size, so I always have loads of cut sheets of paper ready to use. The image of each drawing is sourced from a printed, gridded, version of the photographs. I spend a bit of time getting a batch ready, which means I can get straight on with the work in hand. You will no doubt recognise the technique of copying a drawing using a grid as a guide. When do I make the drawings? So far all the drawings have been made at home, on my lap. Often I’ll be half-watching something on television. I don’t recommend this when drawing from life, as there are more complex relations in that kind of work. My plan was to integrate a new set work into my day, so multi-tasking became inevitable. Incidentally, I do sometimes make a small batch of drawings – four at most – at a sitting. This allows me to achieve the – on average – goal of a drawing a day. As I write this, I have two finished drawings up my sleeve, as it were. While it would be nice to do a drawing every single day, life isn’t that simple, so being clever is the only option.
“What have I learned? I won’t comment on the drawings themselves, aside from saying that some are better than others and that I’m not bored by the process or the images yet. They look good together, too. The process, and specifically going public with the process, has forced me to deliver. I post the drawings on Facebook for my friends to see and each day a drawing gets posted on a blog dedicated to this project here. The discipline has also meant that a body of work has been created in which the individual drawings become part of a greater whole. I am already thinking of how the work might be seen as an installation. Working from prepared photographs (already cropped, already monochrome), means that I can concentrate on technique and, particularly, mark-making. Even over a month, this has become more subtle and other techniques: smudging, dragging, rubbing and so on have become more refined. The huge advantage of working on a series with a non-varying set of conditions is that there is always something I can get on with. The clipboard and materials, along with the paper and printouts are always handy. In half an hour or so, I can make a drawing, rather than waste time on Facebook. Fretting over subject matter or meaning has become a thing of the past, at least with this work. I simply do, as Terry Pratchett would say, the job in front of me.”
The images are Carpet and Wall, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (1) and Corner, Kröller-Müller Museum, The Netherlands (2).
22 thoughts on “Discipline and daily focus”
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This is a really interesting approach, thank you for sharing. I think the feeling of “obligation” to post your work to an expectant audience is an interesting one. I am really tempted to try this approach with a micro set of watercolours to help me progress through the watercolour module, but will probably aim for a painting a day for a month.
Thanks Miriam. The obligation has made all the difference. It’s like being painted into a corner and having to find a way out.
Underpinning this project is a belief that art is, as a friend once said, a ‘doing’ word and that creativity has nothing whatsoever to do with freedom. I’m not interested in personal expression or art as some kind of therapy. For me, the important thing about practice is the spirit of enquiry.
However, I wouldn’t want to disallow anything within the practice of others, but if the work is solipsistic, don’t expect me to be interested. Obviously all work is personal to an extent – you’re the one making it, after all – but dwelling on or valorising that holds no fascination for me.
Miriam, If you do decide to make a set of watercolours every day, take my advice and get the preparation right. Have a set up that doesn’t need to much work. Prepare the paper and materials and let the work take the time up, not the ancillary stuff. If the works are themed around a single subject (think Monet’s Haystacks, for instance), then you’ll manage to uncover much more than if each one is a discrete entity. Obviously the subject could be something like the following, for example:
Self-portrait, or a portrait of someone different each day
A limited palette
A single still life that decays over time
The same view, every day at the same time
etc…
I look forward to seeing them.
A portrait everyday reminds me of an exhibition I saw a few years ago, can’t remember the name of the artist atm:-( Anyway she had done a portrait everyday, and her rule was she had to work from life and they all had to be different people – this gave her some practical problems as you can imagine. The results were really interesting to look at – you could see quite clearly the different moods of the artist whereas the differences between all the different people seemed to be less noticeable. (And that wasn’t to do with her skillfullness)
Anyway reading the above has given me an idea for getting myself unstuck with my drawing and printmaking so thanks!
Hi Bryan – I am now ready to give this a go! Thanks so much for your suggestions. To give a bit of background I am working on the Textiles Degree pathway, and have just (today) finished my last assignment of my second module. This means I have no option but to return to the watercolour now, in order to progress to the second level courses. I have already completed Assignments 1 and 2, 12 months ago – and although I have “using” watercolours in my sketchbook and logbook work for textiles I feel I really do need t get back in the swing. Your suggestion of a theme and prior preparation is very helpful and was one of the main aspects from your post that I could remember clearly! so here goes…
This is very thought provoking, thanks.
I think the first drawing is stunning Bryan.
What a great idea, and the process you use sounds manageable, I’ll try to keep up to date with this .
Thanks for the kinds words everyone. The best way to keep up to date is to subscribe to the blog. I loaded three more images last night (drawn during Lewis and My Mad Fat Diary) which are scheduled to go live over the next three days.
Thanks for this blog. Your project, Bryan, reminds me of a project by Sam Firth who filmed herself every day for a year (see http://staythesamefilm.com/). As a music student I enjoy looking at other forms of art For inspiration. Your remark that you focus on the process of enquiry rather than the artwork you produce has made me reflect on music composition in which the outcome rather than process seems to be the main focus for composers. I have myself tried to use the idea of music composition as a form of enquiry (see http://www.musicforcommunities.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/repetition.html), but feel I’ve thus far only scratched the surface. Would you be able to tell a little bit more about art as a form of enquiry, perhaps signposting to some useful books or discussing your own project from this viewpoint (perhaps a subject for a next blog)?
Best wishes,
Petra
Hi Petra, obviously John Cage looms very large. If you can get hold of the catalogue for an exhibition of his prints that showed at Kettle’s Yard (called Every Day is a Good Day), you can see the results of setting up processes and allowing them to run. He felt relaxed in saying, of his own work, ‘that’s brilliant’, because it was the process that made the work, not him. Obviously he designed the process, so he’s not out of the loop altogether.
Steve Reich’s drum pieces use intervals and loops to build towards a complexity that’s inevitable, because its embedded or encoded into the system.
I’m a huge devotee of the American artist Sol LeWitt. His wall drawings, which weren’t generally excepted by him, are important works. I was lucky enough to install one at Sheffield Site gallery a few years ago. Se more about it he: http://www.bryaneccleshall.co.uk/Sol_LeWitt_-_Drawing_960.html
He sets up an algorithm that determines the drawing. Each time the drawing is made it’s different, but similar. Where’s the art? In the instruction? The making? The idea? LeWitt died in 2007, so can the work still be his? LeWitt’s ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’ are well worth a read.
Regarding the status of enquiry…. You simply have to stick to a process, otherwise there’s no yardstick. Set up some parameters and then submit to them. You might want to regulate time signatures or rhythmic intervals, or restrict the number of notes and play every single permutation of them on a loop. I’m not a musician, but it seems that it’s an artificial system that can be exploited mathematically as much as composed lyrically. I’m not a romantic, so I might not be the best person to ask.
Dear Bryan,
Thanks a lot for sharing your ideas. This is certainly food for thought. When I think about the idea of art/composition as enquiry I tend to think along creative rather than mathematical lines, using another approach to the predictability of the process. It is hard to put my finger on exactly, but your response has given me some starting points for further reflections. Thanks!
Cheers,
Petra
Creativity is about solving problems, rather than freedom or expression, in my opinion. Most contemporary artists use research or a relationship with philosophy and/or politics to inform their practice. That’s not to discount ideas of beauty (which is an enquiry rooted in philosophy anyway), but it does, to my mind, remove an idea of mutually agreed decoration. Making something specifically to please an audience is like referring to a focus group (even if it’s an imaginary one).
I can be quite hardline on this, but I’m not interested in art that second-guesses an audience or has nothing to offer the maker. You make the work you want to make. That’s how it should be, as you’re the one in front of it the most, unless you get really lucky.
There’s also the idea of criticality. This is something that all MA Fine Art students deal with in one form or another, and something you have to kind of work out for yourself. For me it suggests an engagement with the form as well as with the ‘subject’. Great works – take Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon for example – alter the form of painting as well as presenting a subject matter or ‘meaning’. They try and change the world they operate in somehow.
I’m no making that claim for my work, but I am trying to recalibrate my engagement and understanding of the world through the work I make.
Brian – I admire your stamina and ambition. I did this for just short of three years with a camera – I can’t even begin to imagine the commitment needed to keep it going with drawings.
My advice would be to keep some simple ideas in reserve for those dark days when the muse doesn’t strike – although I see you’re effectively doing that by allowing yourself to “average”. Also , watch out for the early “hundreds” and the late “300s”, which were the times in the process when I was most tempted to give up – the former because “this is hard work” the latter because “well I know I can do it now”! I seem to recall – although I can’t remember where from that those are quite common feelings at about those intervals.
Best of luck – I – like lots of others – will be cheering you on from the sidelines. 🙂
Hi Bryan, as an artist who recently completed some abstract paintings based purely on ‘remembered’ emotion I am curious as to whether emotion has a role in your art production.mxx
Mary, I’ve never really used emotion in my work. It’s not that I don’t have or value them, but I’ve never really understood how emotion gets into people’s work in the first place.
There’s an inevitable personal element in any work we make. Even work that seems cold and unemotional comes from an intellect / personality and so reflects or echoes something of the maker. If someone’s personality is pedanitc and neat (for example), then the work they produce is reflect that. If someone is easily distracted, then don’t expect large, detailed and complex work.
Andy Warhol, for example, appeared to present a blank persona to the world, with possibly a dash of the awestruck fan. His work isn’t seen as ’emotional’ but it deal with mortality, glamour, greed, power and so on. To many people there’s an automated quality about his work, which I don’t see.
I’m not interested in adding emotional content. I’m in the work. I made it. I took all the photographsthat these drawings are made from. I cropped them and turned them black and white. I then chose which ones to draw and then drew them. I’m all over them in one respect. I really don’t see how incorporating an emotion would make them better.
I’m interested in the idea of remembering an emotion. How does that work? Isn’t there a danger of falling into an agreed symbolic language?
I wasn’t suggesting that you should add emotion or even, that emotion as content in a piece of work is ‘better’. I am continually reworking certain themes, as you put it, ‘ pulling at a thread’ and i am curious about the process.
I asked whether you used an emotional component because as my iterative way of working reaches an aesthetic finality (in my eyes) there is also a diminished emotional response.
Our reaction to both the process and result is very different to that of the audience and I am very suprised when the opinions/feelings/response of the audience mirrors in part, my original emotional premise for the work.
As to ‘remembered emotion’, it grew out of sharing stories with some relatives – we all ‘remembered’ the same event differently. Our emotional memory had been filtered through
Ego, I think we write the personal history that feeds a psychological need. It is that process that I am attempting to explore through an examination of my own emotional response to a memory.
Mary, that sounds interesting. Is there anywhere I can have a look at the work?
I suspect that we agree more than it might seem. Part of my process of learning / teaching is to be quite simplistic on my approach, which produces an attrition between ideas. Things become clearer, if biased.
By the ay, I recommend writing something for this blog with a link to your own site. My hits have gone from 1200 (Jan 1st to 4th Feb) to about 3000 (4th Feb to today).
Hello Bryan,
Thanks a lot for taking time to respond to my concerns and questions. Your statement that most contemporary artists use research or a relationship with philosophy and/or politics to inform their practice triggers a lot of reflections. There seems to be a dichotomy between arts and music. Though artists and composers inspire each other, they often seem to have their own set of assumptions about how to work and what constitutes quality of their work. The conceptual element seems to be pushed much harder by contemporary artists than the contemporary composers I’ve come across. Within the OCA music composition seems to be treated as a craft for which on needs to develop a set of skills. As a composition student I feel there is much to gain from looking at the way artists approach their work.
Cheers,
Petra
hi Bryan, I have a similar approach, mine seems to involve obsessive repetition of a very simple form (for example a ball). When I’m in the ‘zone’ (in the absence of any other way to describe the deep concentration that drawing can cause) I will produce from twenty to fifty drawings in a couple of hours, especially when I’m watching something really boring on TV, and use whatever is close to hand, ripping pages from my diary or sifting through the waste paper bin next to my chair – using anything that is flattish (old envelopes, junk mail etc). I continue for a couple of weeks until I have hundreds, and because of their new multiple personality these modest forms seem to take on huge importance and are often the basis for an installation or far more ambitious piece than first envisaged.
Linda, There’s something important here about momentum. One of my fellow PhD researchers reckons he makes some work in the studio every week, and has done for about 15 years. He doesn’t really have a sketchbook practice, but he’s constantly thinking through doing.
I described this work to a journalist last evening and we got talking about it in terms of ‘jogging’. He’s under pressure to write five feature pieces a week, a column made up of snippets and occasional longer pieces. Through the discipline of writing pretty much every day his skills increased and work becomes quicker (though not necessarily easier).
Fascinating stuff Bryan. The drawings are great. Good luck with the project.
Thank you for all of this Bryan – I keep coming back to it for inspiration and reassurance!
Bryan’s project stuck in my mind. A friend recently gave me a small-ish square sketchbook as a present and I decided to use it for a drawing-a-day. My subject: an apple. There’s around 90 pages in the sketchbook, I’ve now done just over a third and it’s got more interesting, not less.