DRAW THE WRONG WAY

When you have to come up with a creative solution, you need to feel free to draw like you have never drawn before. And this typically means that you end up drawing the wrong way.

How do you draw the wrong way? When everything that you draw is transparent, you are immediately in uncharted territory. Your drawing might combine or skew accepted projection systems. It may not be a true axonometric. It definitely is not a linear perspective.

The course of humanity’s history is one of stasis and then change. This trajectory was written about in the October 2014 issue of Wired Magazine. On page 128, Scott Dadich gives us the example of Degas’ painting, Jockeys Before the Start With Flagpole. Degas broke the spell of the romantics with a very bold compositional element. The introduction of the vertical pole bisecting the painting was a shocker in the 1870s. Degas obviously felt this need to do something different, and he did it.

To be able to pull off a radically different composition is easier said than done. We all want to do it. We are subliminally conditioned to want to do something, anything, different. Yet we really are not given the tools or the mental latitude. Thus so much of what each of us produces is really a rehashing of what has gone before. And it is admittedly difficult to get out of that rut.

The less formal drawing rules you have, the greater the chance of self expression. When you have to resolve a three dimensional object, the laws of physics and practicality weigh on you. Your three dimensional solution has to close. Yet the methods that you use to close that object can be as free as you dare.

While there is nothing transparent about Degas’ painting, the spirit of that creative act does inform our efforts. When transparency is applied to a three dimensional object, when you draw the wrong way, boldness is given half a chance.