A Journey Through Drawing

The Journal of Architecture, 2014

2024

The book brings together 23 authors who represent 18 critical and reflexive practices of drawing in design. It puts forward drawing as a form of research, a means to investigate, explore and gain a better understanding of an idea, a condition or a phenomenon. In the 18 chapters, drawing is presented as a practice that inquires, establishes its own temporality, constructs a dialogue and explores materiality. The texts engage drawing aesthetics (spatial, temporal, and material) and drawing ethics (investigating and making sense together) as well as four overarching themes: inquiry, time, dialogue and materiality —in drawing. Taken as a collective conversation on drawing practice, this book offers a shared reflection on the agency of drawing, on its potential to explore issues raised by our built and cultural environment, and on the ability of drawing to support and contribute to design research. It frames drawing as a research practice, one that is both deeply rooted in its disciplinary context and openly challenging its limits and conventions. —in Drawing adds to a continuing conversation on design research methods and the ethics and aesthetics of representation. It seeks to further establish the significance of drawing as a legitimate mode of inquiry across design disciplines and beyond.

Drawing, 2023

Years ago, I encountered the work of artist-designer duo Arakawa and Madeline Gins, whose 'architecture of Reversible Destiny' seeks to invigorate those who navigate the rolling floors, curving walls and unexpected inversions of their complex living spaces. These structural playgrounds for body and mind were premised on the idea that 'neural circuits are flexible, interwoven, and adaptive' (8), and that by providing people with multifaceted, hyper-stimulating sensory environments, we could live healthier, longer lives. Andrea Kantrowitz's Drawing Thought: How Drawing Helps Us Observe, Discover, and Invent does similar work, as the reader becomes participant and playmate, navigating intricate visual and intellectual spaces dedicated to thinking about, with, and through the activity of drawing. In eight richly illustrated chapters and thirty pages of supplemental notes, Kantrowitz expertly guides a reader through discussion and examples of how drawing embodies human perception, imagination and experience. She creates a format that encourages ongoing cognitive adaptation to text, image and concept, often playing radically with form and structure. To experience the book, the reader must be open to thinking, feeling and sometimes drawing their way through each page, willing to surrender a bit of knowing where you stand, only to be reoriented towards your own lived experience of hand and line.

Educare - vetenskapliga skrifter

The article reports the results of an empirical investigation into movement viewed as a quality of an aesthetic working process. Any process presupposes movement - there is no process if one stands still. At times, movement is deliberately provoked by artists wanting to view their work from a different perspective. This was the approach applied in the first-year course of an art teacher’s program in Sweden, where movement was provoked through shifts of media (cardboard, sketching, Minecraft) during a four-week working process. The assignment was to work with a 3D shape through these media. The students' process journals (containing writings and photography) constitute the material for the study. The results are visualized on an individual level as movement patterns and five characteristic patterns are discerned. Movement within and between media are visualized collectively, showing not only how media shifts stimulate movement but also how the students themselves can provoke move...

Latin Design Process, 2010

We intend to analyze design as a cross-fertilization of visual language. For such purpose, we will consider art as exemplary practice of such language. The communication will focus transition from modern to contemporary. That is, modern reflecting the artistic as symbolic derivation and contemporary art as symptom expression. We will interpret the process of design project through drawing, regarded both as project’s instrumental utility (technology) and condition for disciplinary reflection (art), addressing the issue of the significance of understanding drawing in design project practice. In this scope, at the level of artistic production, there are two cornerstone conditions implied: 1. the inclusion of the receiver within the work, "despising" the productive meaning in favor of the process; 2. the critical (semantical) valuing of the work to the detriment of its material execution (practice). Considering design project as: 1. practice whose language is (is able to be) mostly visual and 2. based on a Latin framework of analysis and specifically Portuguese, whose tradition derives from School practice (fine arts, including architecture), we intend to analyze to what extent is art, in its visual language status, an influence, or even an intrusion in design project procedural practice. For such, we regard drawing as discipline and subject serving the objectivity of the present communication proposal. We propose as object for analysis project drawings from contemporary Portuguese designers whose merit is national and internationally recognized. Objects collection is performed through their authors and in the scope of an ongoing research regarding the relationship between drawing and project practice in design. We aim to understand design object, as exchange of project’s full communication, through the following question: how can drawing, as a mediator of the practice of project design, induces the creation of the object and hence its existence as language in design? We intend to answer this question considering that drawing, as language materializing the project, is mediator for representation (through technical expression), classifying function (through program) and interpretative mark of imagination (through authorship). Understanding to what extent drawing language contamination influences the process of design project raises the issue of the relevance of drawing, through graphics, to assure the transformation of the object into symbolic added value to the project’s space-time frame.

While designers use a range of visual representations throughout different stages of the design process, the style and form of representation is uniquely different during the early graphic ideation phase. The often used medium like sketching, by externalizing the developing thought process during this phase, serves the primary function of communicating with self. In fact these representation efforts acts as extensions of the activities of the mind, busy solving the design problem. Part one of this paper identifies how this point of view influences the process of execution of the sketches. The discussion implies that the mind can dedicate substantial attention to the problem solving aspects, only if the process of representation is routinized and operates like a near natural act performed with limited conscious attention. The second part explores the pedagogic implications of this hypothesis, and attempts to search for a structured way of making the act of sketching a routine and near natural activity. The variables that can lead to such a goal are identified and categorized into four sequential levels. The first level emphasizes sketching with the feel of the pencil path, along with fluency, speed and independence of direction. The second level stresses on delinking the eye movements from the action of drawing and the third defines issues involved in control of complex motor actions in sketching. While the first three levels are treated as the basic prerequisites, the last level emphasizes developing a feel of operating in perspective space, an ability necessary for representation of real world objects. Visual representations are an inseparable part of disciplines like architecture and design, which deal with decisions about spatial creations. These representations are seen as effective and concise manifestations of designer's thoughts, ideas and decisions arid act as a vehicle for communicating with the team. Because of their ability to precisely capture and convey thoughts and decisions, visual representations are often called a designer's language. Indeed, they do serve some of Rediscovering the act of Sketching 178 the functions of the natural language, for the professional groups who share the common codes, symbols and conventions of this language. But is this an adequate characterization of the role that these representations play in design? Designers tend to use the entire range of visual representations during the various phases of the design process. Early creative phase, often referred to as graphic ideation, is crowded with doodling, thumbnail sketching and freehand perspectives, which serve mainly as innovation tools. Downstream applications need a more precise and formalized system of communication. Categories like engineering drawings, orthographics, layouts and maps, often used in the later part are more precise. They show a higher degree of abstraction and are also considerably more formal than freehand perspective sketches and doodling of the ideation phases. The purpose as well as the nature and style of representation during this phase is clearly different than the later phases of the process, where precision in communication is emphasized. 1

Senses & Sensibility in Lisbon. Design Marketing and Visual Culture in the Right Place (coord. E. Côrte-Real, C. Duarte, F. Rodrigues), Edições IADE, Lisbon, , 2012

In this paper, the object’s evocation and experience is considered by examining drawing as project’s disciplinarian function. We depart from the argument that drawing is the visual language that imagines, examines and makes the project’s materiality visible. Drawing as function to materialize the project, in the condition of existing towards... is, in this case, mediator for representation (technical expression), the act of classification that discriminates and influences the project (program) and interpretative mark of imagination (authorship). The theme we intend to develop considers drawing as a set of images that as a language configures projectual reality. We will address the issue of knowledge through drawing by means of its practice in the project. In this case, drawing is an instrument that carries and interprets a particular cultural expression, transferring it onto the project causing it to acquire a specific symbolic register. We depart from the hypothesis that drawing practices in the scope of design project differentiate the projectual result, conferring the object its singular identity. We seek to justify the hypothesis through the importance of drawing as visual language deriving from the artistic field, within the contingent Western interpretation. That is, awarding drawing the ability to be the project’s critical interpreter. Our interpretation context addresses the practice of Portuguese designers whose work is institutionally recognized in Portugal and abroad. The analyzed material - drawings - results from the ongoing doctoral research on the proximity and influence of drawing on Design Project practice. The purpose is to verify the terms of use of drawing through authorship, aiming at contributing towards design knowledge through three vectors: 1. the imagetic and authorship approach, 2. technology and classification approach, 3. representative and programmatic approach. To conclude, we propose drawing as language for multiple perceptions, possibly fragmented, fissured, disjointed, and possibly trans-figured into project’s metalanguage. Keywords: Drawing, Design, Project, Representation

TRACEY, 2022

Drawing as an action and exploration requires behavioural losses. A separation, an imposed distance, sometimes an abandonment, a feeling of incompleteness, of something missing, of lack or a need for fulfilment are all situations reflected in and related to drawing. In this article, loss in drawing is described during the action, from the process point of view, and more precisely as the process of losing attitude and attributes through different points of view. Loss during drawing can be found in represented objects which are configured differently, with less accuracy in the representation, in losing senses such as vision, by trying to configurate invisible or inexpressible content, such as loss. In this case, loss in drawing is presented and investigated from the process point of view. During drawing as action, an inner experience and behaviour often require loss of one’s certainties, control, habitus, bias, references or final scope. While alive, the loss of “the world around” or that of (first) references to poetical theories becomes the loss of the self, of the artist’s identity during the poetic process. Finally, drawing is presented as a loss and a separation of the represented object from the action of its birth and, therefore, its time-contemporaneity; How loss is experienced when “you are present”. Drawing becomes a transformation, while, after the action (once it is completed), the “loss of time” becomes memory and embodied experience.

Journal of Visual Art and Design, 2013

This paper sets view to consider the significance of drawings as part of visual communication design. Drawing gives a chance to observe, to muse, to select and develop continuous thinking techniques. It is to present that drawing is not just a cursory to generate ideas, but it has its own energy and philosophy which deserve studying as a domain of art. In recent years, drawing has received attention; there is on the one hand a group of drawing practitioners, and on the other hand a group of drawing researchers. Drawing in design is a medium of visual and spatial thinking. Digging into research actually is a necessity for visual communication studies. It is suggested here three kinds of research approaches: research into art/design; research through art/design; and research for art/design. Indeed, it leads to four axis topics (topoi) for design studies: design practice, design product, design discourse, and design meta-discourse. A field of study called 'visual culture' which, departed from the study of critical theory and cultural studies which have set out relatively new field of study called 'visual studies'. Based upon to this perspective, visual (communication) studies should be more self-reflexive. The production of visual communication contributes to construct the visual culture in society.

Design Communication Association Biannual Conference Proceedings , 2024

This paper is a reflection on several artistic and illustrative works completed over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, culminating in prepared studio activities, a faculty salon exhibit at the author’s host university, and a gallery talk with fellow faculty. Ideas, insights, and implications for future student exercises and projects are explored here. Confronting the persistent questions of how does one begin a drawing or a design process is investigated. New interpretations and the social media dissemination of traditional media, particularly during the lockdown period, imply a new and refreshed respect for 2D and 3D creativity and expression in the midst of the information age and the emergence of AI engines in design processes and representation.

On drawing in general We can situate the origin of drawing in the process of human development and the early graphic activities related to neuromotor and perceptive developments of the species, activties and forms of behaviour at the source, among other modalities, of the various graphical forms of communication which "culminate", so to speak, historically in writing. Thus considered, drawing, that is, the graphic act, its procedures and results, is an important element of human intellectual and emotional life; it is both the source and the product of developments of perception, of manual ability, of symbolization, and of the interrelated capacities of cognition and expression in social life. This characterization is relevant for the understanding of drawing as an artistic discipline in our time, as the cultural context today, marked by technological development, transforms the disciplines, pressing their boundaries as it modifies our means of knowledge, communication and expression, relating and transforming in depth the "means of production" in general, and consequently our material and symbolic ways of life. On drawing as art Drawing is both form and discipline. The autonomous discipline (that is, drawing considered and appreciated by itself) is based on the form which is also an "infrastructural" elemen of several other disciplines such as painting, design, architecture, etc. In the comparison and distinction between, for example, drawing and painting, it has been said that drawing is what remains of painting when color is removed. An operation that emphasizes the ideal nature or ideal element characteristic of drawing-a more abstract element by contrast to the essential, unmediated sensuality of painting-and also discloses drawing as an initial moment, level or basic element of the visual creation of forms in the arts of spatial representation , including the arts of space-time experience such as dance, film, among others. Point → Line → Plane → Figure, the primary generative elements of spatial analysis and representation appear in drawing as "concrete abstractions" and characterize its essential functions of mediation in the process of mapping space-time relations, in processes of identification and projection, in the construction of the experience of self and of the world. If we remove the element of color from painting, what remains is the delimitation of forms by the essential, "primitive" contrast between light and shadow. In this way, drawing can be considered as the elementary or primary way of graphical organization of the relations between lights and darks generating the forms and the rhythms of spatial representation. As an autonomous or artistic form, drawing is also a "last" or final form, both synthetic and dynamic, that is, based on a relative economy of means, self-sufficient and, at the same time, implying a space of future developments as a generative form (the same consideration applies to the use of color in the drawing). Drawing is concomitantly and essentially, both complete and incomplete form and process, the embodiment of an essential tension between being and becoming. As synthesis and, at the same time, as the overcoming of form by form, drawing is art itself.

This design research examines my personal process of sketching and image-making as an aid to learning. The goal is to show—both within the process and the narrative that is created— how I used image-making as a learning tool during graduate school. The professional and academic world is demanding more of us all and topping that list of demands is innovation and creativity. At the same time, the educational system is being criticized for actually doing the opposite—killing creativity. Having been a recipient of killed creativity, the question “how does one find one’s creative self?”is of great importance to me, particularly since I am a creative professional. My entering graduate school was initiated by my search for the answer to this question. Upon entering graduate school, I came to believe that my training and experience as a graphic designer and illustrator positively influenced my approach to learning. I believed that my sketching process was the root of this influence. I began this thesis with the question “How does one find their creative self?” During my initial research I found that the dialectic process of sketching was playing an integral role in finding my creative voice and had become an important learning tool for me during graduate school. This realization therefore shifted my research towards a self-study of my personal use of sketching, looking at the questions: why do I sketch? what does it provide me? and how does it assist my creative thinking and problem solving? My background as a designer influenced my decision to use a design methodology which is an interdisciplinary paradigm that reflects elements of arts-informed, heuristic, phenomenology, and action research. The graphic narrative provides a medium that combines the power of both verbal and visual. The word/picture interdependent combination “where words and pictures go hand in hand ... convey an idea that neither could convey alone” (McCloud, 1993, p.155). My method for self-inquiry and dialogue was to create five graphic narratives, each about the creation of an image that I did during my time in graduate school or influenced my thinking during graduate school. Following each of these five stories is a “back story” which documents the process of creating the graphic narrative. I found that the process of sketching offered a number of benefits • an expansion of my problem space, a place to think, expand my thoughts and find new ideas; • a place to put my ideas and consider them as communication, to evaluate the message and contemplate the audience and their reactions to the message; • a place to self-reflect where I could re-vision and re-evaluate past memories; • an aid for memory but more importantly a place to create memories; • a place to create that provided intrinsic motivation and ultimately made me happy; • a place where I could dress ideas in different clothes and look again with different eyes. Sketching was my tool for thinking and understanding but also enabled a place for me to be creative. I am not an anomaly, therefore the question that then follows is “how can others learn about and use this tool?”

The symposium Thinking through Drawing: Practice into Knowledge brought together artists, neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, medical practitioners, designers, and educators from the US and the UK, all with a shared interest in drawing and cognition. This trans-disciplinary gathering was held at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City in October 2011 and addressed a broad range of concerns regarding contemporary drawing practice, theoretical analysis and education, in light of current scientific research.

Educate~, 2011

Michelkevičė, L. & Michelkevičius, V. (eds.) Atlas of Diagrammatic Imagination: Maps in Research, Art and Education, 2019

We invite you to traverse the imagination and knowledge of all the artists and researchers who contributed maps, diagrams, and texts to this atlas. Here, scientific and artistic modes of research interact with other practices: drawing, visualisation, mapping, mediation, and education. How does a diagram differ from a text? What are the pros and cons of diagrams when compared to text? Can a map be a research component, an artwork, and a scientific means of communication, all at the same time? How do diagrams mediate between different cognitive systems? How can diagrams convey bodily experiences and gestures? How do they facilitate education? These are only few questions that delineate a general research territory where the book authors’ imaginations overlap. Even though cartographic references play an important role, many of the maps presented and discussed in this atlas go beyond the geographical notion of map, and they often bear no reference to either a location or its representation. They may involve multilayered diagrams, trajectories of a freely moving body or a hand, visual signs of hesitancy, tools of material or visual thinking, charts of tacit knowledge, notations of sensual data, or the models of research hypotheses or findings. This research is also a response to the times we live in. In the face of ever-increasing information flows and the challenges of big data processing and rendition, a linear text is not always the most suggestive form of communication. Meanwhile in maps, within a single plane, we can operate with multiple layers of knowledge, and use different means of expression in order to discover unexpected links. And yet, in the context of our lifestyles as driven by ubiquitous touchscreens, this atlas might appear as a capricious act of dissent. We call our readers and users to slow down, get comfortable, and immerse or even lose themselves in the essays, diagrams, and fold-out maps. The book will prove useful to those working in and between the areas of art history, media and visual studies, literary studies, urbanism, design, sound art, philosophy, science and technology studies (STS), and education. Lina Michelkevičė and Vytautas Michelkevičius (eds.) 2019 *** Bilingual (EN/LT) collection of texts by Arnas Anskaitis, Tomas S. Butkus, Vitalij Červiakov, Christoph Fink, Nikolaus Gansterer, Aldis Gedutis, Giedrė Godienė, Sandra Kazlauskaitė, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Lina Michelkevičė, Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt Translator: Tomas Čiučelis Copy editors: Dangė Vitkienė and John Fail Designer: Laura Grigaliūnaitė Language: Lithuanian and English Publisher: Vilnius Academy of Arts Press Release date: 2019 Pages: 208 p Format: 35×25,5 cm Covers: hardback Circulation: 365 ISBN 978-609-447-329-6 Weight: 1150 g