DRAWING FROM DRAWING – PICASSO’S BULL

The first thing you should do is scroll to the bottom of this page. The drawing sequence is from the bottom to the top. This is a Drawing From Drawing (DFD), in which the basic geometry of a Picasso’s Bull is used as a form generator.

The basic precept of DFD is simple: you use the holistic form of one of your transparent drawings to generate your next holistic form. What I try to do from one DFD to the next is consolidate and rationalize so that I move ever closer to something that is Ready To Build. So, again, scroll to the bottom to start with my photo of Picasso’s Bull, and then work your way back up the page.

Drawing 3 (top of the page): Again, I looked solely at Drawing 2. I was seeing a series of curvilinear spaces. Folding, overlapping and curving planes serve to modulate the natural light entering from the top. This was drawn with Byzantine Spacetime.

Drawing 2: My second DFD. I looked solely at Drawing 1 for any geometric and form information. The distillation and simplification of the geometry of Drawing 1 should be evident.

Drawing 1: My first form generation using the overlapping shapes of the sculpture as a form generator. Imagine the sculpture laid flat and you employ form projection from the geometry that interests you.

Source Image. The title of this sculpture is Bull. I took this photo with my phone at MOMA during the Picasso sculpture show in 2015.

Classically, we are taught to design with drawing overlays. The use of “yellow trace” allowed a distillation and refinement of concepts. In plan, that is. When, ever, were you taught to, first, develop a holistic form, from which you were to develop and refine it in your next drawing as another holistic form? This iteration of holistic form to holistic form is only possible with Transparent Drawing. In the iterative demonstration above, I am no doubt only scratching the surface of the power of Drawing From Drawing. I would love to see what else can be knowledged with this mode.

Another thought: Theme and Variation. Drawing from Drawing could be considered a theme and variation iteration. Although, TAV is principally applied to music: think of a Bach violin Partita. Yet TAV is usually intended to convey a holistic understanding as the variations are, to use visual terms, overlaid on each other, in time. So in this light, TAV is applicable to Drawing From Drawing: they are both iterative, they require time, and the knowledge of one is knowledged in the others.