Drawing by touch

Fingerprint authentication has become the norm

Your fingerprint is often used to verify to the rest of the world that you are you, but even the most advanced fingerprint identification systems have limitations. 

I have commented upon the relationship between touch and drawing several times before and one aspect in particular has begun to interest me even more than it did. This is the use of touch to verify the world.

The King James Bible, John 20: 25 states this; in relation to the debate between Thomas and the rest of the disciples of Christ, 'The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.' This text was the stimulus for Caravaggio's wonderful painting 'The Incredulity of Saint Thomas'. I was going to insert an image of the painting here, but when I began searching for it on line I found this image.

The Moment of Doubt: Thomas Touches the Wounds of the Risen Christ

Underneath the image it stated, "Generated with AI: Editorial use must not be misleading or deceptive." I hadn't realised how pervasive AI was now, even a search for an image, (I had not put Caravaggio's name in on purpose, because I thought I might discover a new artist who had treated the same idea differently), was now tapping into AI generation and it does look pretty convincing. In fact if it had come with the name of an artist underneath it, I would probably have put it forward as another example of an artist illustrating how touch supersedes sight. But now, I had another reason for thinking about the issue, as yet AI hasn't really entered the field of touch and this image really does highlight how sight can be easily deceived, so for now at least I can still quote Margaret Atwood, “Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas-Caravaggio (1601-2)

In comparison with the AI generated image, Caravaggio's is so much more intense and visceral. There is real feeling in it driven by authentic experience, Saint Thomas, cant look at what he feels, the sensation is too emotionally charged for him to look directly at it, whilst in the AI generated image the actors might as well be looking at a wart on Christ's hand. 

Although slightly sent off track by my AI discovery, I'm still thinking about what started me off on this post, which was my wondering if I could use the authenticity that touch gives to sight as part of my interoceptual exploration. In particular I was thinking of bringing my 3D work in ceramics back into my drawing led research. I have of late tended to separate the two but now is the time perhaps to bring them back together, the imagery made may well have an authenticity that is more honest. I could also begin switching between drawing the body from touch and then making objects from the drawings and making objects from touch and then making drawings from the objects. I have already begun a sort of hybrid process, whereby I have made some inserts out of clay for my drawings, but this doesn't quite work. Another stage of material research is needed and it will be important to get this done before I begin working with a dancer and a poet, to see if we can work together in order to take these ideas on further.

As I write about touch, I'm reminded of a post I put up several years ago on what was called at the time, 'swell paper', so have also decided to go back to the issues surrounding how people with impaired sight deal with image making. For instance, the artist Emilie Louise Gossiaux uses a 'Sensational BlackBoard', which consists of a plastic sheet with rubber padding on top of it. When she puts her paper over the pad and presses into it with a pen, it raises up the line that has been drawn. At the same time that she draws a line, she is able to feel it with her other hand. She calls it, "Blind contour drawing".

Emilie Louise Gossiaux

She states, "I’m touching the paper, feeling its size and imagining it in front of me. I can already see the line drawing I want to make—the action that the London in that drawing will be performing—as well as the mood I want the picture to have. I gather up all that energy and I let myself feel it emotionally, too. And that’s when I start to draw." (London is her Labrador guide dog.) I was interested in her work because she interconnects with her guide dog in such a way that interspecies communication is two way. The dog licks her and she touches the dog, both having equal rights in the relationship. Touch in this case seeming to provide a flat platform on which both human and animal communication can be maintained. The attempt to make an honest straightforward image is I think exemplary. She is also a sculptor and works in clay, her installation 'Seeing with Ten Fingers' being very close in sensibility to work I have done in the past and I am thinking about returning to. When I worked with people with certain illnesses, to visualise their pain three dimensionally, in order to go on to make votives for them, I sometimes had to combine listening with looking and then with feeling by touch, as the people I worked with wanted to feel the objects made, to see if they 'felt' (in emotional terms) right. 

Crohn's disease votive

Crohn's disease is an inflammatory bowel disease and the ceramic above was my final version of a votive for someone that wanted to relieve its effects. The process began as a series of drawings and these were then translated into ceramic. The person I worked with needed to touch and feel the final agreed form, before it being put into use as a votive. (Once a votive form is agreed upon, a short ritual is undertaken whereby the person needing to use the votive, transfers their wish or desire into the object and then they either smash it, bury it, hide it, display it or give it back to me, so that it can be taken away, both metaphorically and literally). 

Emilie Louise Gossiaux

Frozen shoulder votive

Like myself her work is drawing led, Gossiaux says, "Drawing has always been an entry point for me, and a meditative process, where I envision a blank piece of paper that's in my hands. I feel it out, and that's when the images start to come. I start to visualise what it is that I am seeing in my mind." She further states that on starting the process of drawing, "I’m touching the paper, feeling its size and imagining it in front of me." In her case touch does come before sight, or is this instead of sight, or a translation of the memory of sight? The physical presence of the paper triggers an image, just as in my own case it is the moving of materials around on the paper surface that triggers an image into life.

Emilie Louise Gossiaux: Doggirl they called me: 2021

Emilie Louise Gossiaux has work in the latest exhibition at the Henry Moore Centre in Leeds, 'Beyond the Visual'. Her sculpture 'Doggirl they called me', can in this exhibition be touched and it was wonderful at the opening to see so many people taking trouble to feel their way over the objects on display. It did feel transgressive to touch Doggirl, more so than other objects such as Barry Flanagan's 'Elephant'; although her sculpture is clearly a small hybrid model of a dog and herself, she was still in reality being touched. Her melding of herself and her dog 'London' together, also transports us into a more dream like reality, one presided over by half forgotten images of Anubis. I found the work quite disturbing, it reminded me of Kiki Smith's work, she also has a sensibility that allows her, animist like, to slide between material and animal identities.  

When I was in charge of the Jacob Kramer College part-time Fine Art and Craft course, we had a blind student. He specialised in ceramics and he bought his guide dog into college every day. In order to help him move around the ceramic studio, Dave Graham, the then head of the pottery, allowed strings to be attached to the surfaces of the various tables and equipment that needed to be used by the student during the day. In effect a three dimensional map was constructed of the area, the student at its centre like a spider. By integrating him into the space, it allowed him to flow with the materials and equipment, he became a component of the studio, just as the studio became an extension of him. The student went on to make some very powerful work, however I don't remember him making anything as good as the sculpture he made of his guide dog. It was a thing of tactile beauty, it was like a mound that slumped out into the room and as it did it found shapes for your fingers, because to understand it, you had to touch it. In fact to look at it was confusing, because you read too much gravity into the image, the boniness sensations felt by touching the dog were translated into concrete, which was what the final sculpture was made of. Boniness was directly translated into the hardness of the concrete, not the look of bone held muscle, which is something else entirely. I also suspect that those feelings were not just about touch. The physiological condition of the body needs to be preserved by homeostatic maintenance. Therefore the body takes self-readings of its water and oxygen needs, temperature, stress levels, cardiac function, emotional well-being and tiredness. Some of these things we think of as physical needs and others as mental needs, but for the body and its use of chemical regulatory releases, the readings all come down to the same thing; is this something when experienced, that needs to be diminished or nourished? Our emotional well being is as vital to our survival as having enough water; the feeling of loneliness, just as important as the feeling of thirst. As the student felt his dog, emotional feelings of attachment and warmth, would be interconnected with feelings of hardness, softness and hairiness. 

In order to think through this complexity perhaps it might be useful to break down the way we touch and to think about the different qualities of experience we can sense with it. 

From: Lederman and Klatzky: 1987

A rough visual translation of Lederman and Klatzky

As we attempt to translate touch into a drawn visual language, some basic forms and their combination and interconnection with contouring can be an entry point into a way of working that then has to have folded into it marks and lines that have emotional attributes.

Victor Newsome

From: Bo Han Qiu Drawing studio

Any drawing primer, (such as the page from one above), will show a student how approaches to 3D visualisation can come together, but in order to sense an emotional engagement, other elements need to come into play. Jenny Saville's ear below being an active element in relation to the emotional read of a head and not simply a passive thing stuck on the side of the face. 

Jenny Saville: Detail

We rarely look at our ears but we often touch them and when we do, they become a site where three senses meet.. They can also be the site of ear ache and no doubt my own fiddling about by sticking my fingers into my ears when they are blocked by wax, has contributed to this. The image below is an attempt to bring together a visual translation of hearing, touching and the interoceptual feeling of inner pain, all at the same time. 

Left ear aching.  

Head with earache pain coming from the right.

Ear ache is one of those life experiences that when it is occurring does seem to verify the fact that the world is effecting us. We would do anything to relieve the pain and it is something felt inside the body, easily locatable and in need of another sort of touch, the one where we hold our hand over an ear, hoping that its warmth will help ease the pain. These sensations are also intimately connected with the body's feeling tone, the anguish of the pain and the relief we feel once the pain goes. It is no accident that we use the same words for a feeling meaning an emotional state and feeling to be aware of a sensation through touch. Therefore as I gradually try out various approaches to visualising these issues I shall no doubt have to return to Lederman and Klatzky's ideas of types of touch and to see if I can match them up with visualisations of emotional feelings. Strangely enough although I began this post thinking about how touch can be used to verify the external world, it has becomes more about how we verify our internal world, the one nobody else can feel except ourselves. Perhaps in reality they are both the same.

Reference: 

“Hand Movements: a Window into haptic object recognition,” by S. J. Lederman and R. L. Klatzky, 1987, Cognitive Psychology, 19, p. 346.

Emilie Louise Gossiaux:

See also:

Drawing textures

The imprint and the trace

Drawing as the trace of a touch

Where stains and traces meet: To touch is to believe

Cross contour drawing

Swell paper