Drawing the processes of life

Gemma Anderson-Tempini: Garden of Forking Paths; Mitosis Score no.2, 2019. Pencil, watercolour and colour pencil on paper, 

When I attended the drawing conference "Drawing Across Along Between University Borders" in Porto in 2024, there was a presentation by Gemma Anderson-Tempini, whereby she outlined her work on what she called 'process biology'. I was fascinated to see how she had been integrated into biological laboratories, scientists obviously really appreciating what she was bringing to their understanding of the complex forms of life's processes. I was very envious of her contacts and thought the work she was doing was exemplary, so on getting home immediately bought a copy of the book she worked on, 'Drawing the processes of life'. The book explores how an artist might visually represent the dynamic processes of molecular level life, using drawing as a way of inquiring into living processes at the cellular scale. Drawing is shown to be a useful pathway to knowledge, rather than it being about the production of static images, something that I was aware I'm hoping to achieve myself, but also aware that I am still very concerned with finding that 'image' that sums an idea up. Her lecture was very useful and it gave me much food for thought. 

I am also interested in what she has to say because she had a complex installation constructed in Leeds in 2023, 'And She Built a Crooked House' whereby she had filled the rooms and garden at Burton Grange, a Victorian house in Far Headingley, Leeds, with elements of a journey through the fourth dimension; an artwork that was part-factual, part-historical and part-autobiographical. In addition to physics, concepts and ideas associated with the higher spatial dimensions were touched upon, such as maths, art, literature, cinema and the spiritual and I thought at the time that she had made a good fist of trying to show how these things could be ambitiously interconnected.

I wonder if I could make a similar or even more poetic set of connections and observations in relation to my own work. For instance is it possible to open out both scientific and sociological associations that begin with drawing the processes of life? Perhaps starting with the hand drawn diagram below of the relationship between RNA and DNA, that can be used to illustrate the fact that DNA stores genetic instructions, while RNA acts as a messenger and worker that translates those instructions into proteins. I like to think of the RNA as an open spiral, ready to connect, whilst the DNA is a closed spiral in love with itself. Reproduction and love being in our human minds often inseparable but also often subject to emotional stress. Our cells get RNA from DNA through a transcription process, which uses the DNA of a gene as a template to build a complementary RNA molecule. This happens inside the cell nucleus. This process is initiated when an enzyme called RNA polymerase binds to a specific starting sequence (the promoter) on the DNA, causing the double helix to unwind and separate. Once this happens a process of elongation begins, the enzyme reads the DNA template strand and builds a single-stranded RNA molecule by matching complementary RNA bases. However this is not a direct copy. For instance, thymine (symbol T or Thy), one of the four nucleotide bases that make up our DNA, alongside adenine, guanine, and cytosine (A, C, and G), is replaced by uracil (U) when RNA is constructed. Hence the three letter "start codon" that initiates the process is AUG. Like all other forms of transcription, during the process of converting data from one format to another, something is nearly always lost and yet at the same time, something is gained, a new read is possible, such as when a written transcription is made from a verbal model, by typing the information out it becomes more formal, it may then have more gravitas or appear to be more factual, it also becomes less personal, the unique sound of an individual's voice being lost and replaced by the chosen font that the printed text is now set within. 

Drawing of the relationship between RNA and DNA

I have looked before at the importance of folding as an underlying principle embedded into the idea of life and reproduction. Folding gives us a way to think about how reproduction is facilitated; for instance the first functions of chromosome folding are perhaps to mediate genome replication, compaction and segregation. RNA molecules play a central role in virtually all cellular processes. However in order to play out their roles, the various RNA molecules have to fold into specific three-dimensional structures. Therefore each and every RNA molecule has to at some point undergo the transition from an unfolded, disordered state to a functional conformity. A broader understanding of this transition has also led to the RNA world hypothesis. This proposes that early life forms relied almost entirely on RNA to store genetic information and catalyse chemical reactions, its ability to both self-replicate and operate as an enzyme being vital to the building of mechanisms that would eventually lead to the origin of life, facilitating both metabolism and reproduction. A RNA molecule is linear, but when folded into three dimensions ribozymes can be formed and they have similar abilities to enzymes which in turn allow for metabolism, the chemical reactions that convert food into energy. Most present day enzymes are now proteins; ribosomal RNA (rRNA) catalyses the formation of peptide bonds, stitching amino acids together to build proteinsribozymes. A ribosomal subunit is one of the two distinct, structural components that make up a complete ribosome. Ribosomes are essential for translating genetic information into proteins and are made up of two subunits: a small subunit and a large subunit. The small subunit binds to messenger (mRNA), which contains the genetic code for the protein. The large subunit adds amino acids to the growing protein chain. They are found in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and are responsible for protein synthesis, which converts genetic information into the proteins which are essential for life, as they are necessary for all cellular functions.Together, these protein-and-RNA complexes act as the cell's molecular machinery, translating genetic information from messenger RNA (mRNA) into functional proteins.

I was pleased to find this illustration of the two subunits, we are built from blobs

Inside myself I know I house all sorts of bacteria, my intestines have a long standing relationship with E coli, which comes in a variety of forms many of which are useful to myself but some are harmful. Like myself though E coli will have a deep 'code' or 'codon' that determines the form that we will finally become, and we share a sequence of three RNA nucleotides (Adenine-Uracil-Guanine) that serve as the universal "start codon". The codon signals the cellular machinery to begin building a protein and dictates the insertion of the amino acid methionine. Methionine acts as the "start codon" (AUG) that initiates the translation of every protein synthesised in the body. The combined small and large subunit of E coli is in the scientific world named the 50S ribosomal subunit and it has been visualised as in the imasge below.

The 50S ribosomal subunit of E. coli 

I like this visualisation as it gives me a feeling that I think I know what sort of thing this is, even though I don't really. It intuitively feels like something I could grasp and if so, I can make something like it out of clay. It consists of three compartments, which are technically described as: the A (aminoacyl) site which binds incoming charged aminoacyl tRNAs. The P (peptidyl) site which binds charged tRNAs carrying amino acids that have formed peptide bonds with the growing polypeptide chain but have not yet dissociated from their corresponding tRNA. The E (exit) site that releases dissociated tRNAs so that they can be recharged with free amino acids. It is acting I think to put in place the first codon after the AUG. 

When I'm talking to people about what they feel their insides are up to, they may describe certain 'fictional' organs, such as a spleen, a something heard of but not very often seen, unless of course you are a medical professional. The drawn image of the 50S ribosomal subunit of E. coli has now begun to inhabit my visual archive and as such it will I'm sure emerge at some point as an image related to how I visualise an interoceptual experience. An image that is initially made to help describe one of the fundamental processes of life, becoming part of an image bank dedicated to visualising how we internally feel. Both the more scientific illustration and my feeling led forms, having a relationship to an idea that organic forms begin as blobs.

The issue for myself as an artist is that the processes of life are as much emotional as scientific. Yes I know that science is opening out amazing possibilities for our future, but I also know that our crazy emotional embodied mess of stuff, is what initiated the riots that happened in Southampton recently. I'm sure a scientist somewhere is at this very moment trying to isolate the various chemicals that were released as rioters achieved states of vitriolic anger, but my present feeling tone is one of anxiety and worry that a tragic death more to do with I suspect police incompetence, is seen by many as a sign of unfair treatment and the dire straits that some people find themselves in, can become situations that feel as if they can be transformed by smashing things up. Rioting can feel as if you are operating in response to righteous anger and some people are very good as triggering this. My body has been constructed using DNA sequencing but my conscious awareness of that is very much on the back burner as I watch the riots unfold, as I go back to drawing the processes of life, I try to acknowledge that both these situations are part of my life story. 

The riot in Southampton: Protestors make Nazi gestures

I'm reminded that science is often brought to a sudden stop by fascism. Emil Starkenstein Czech-Jewish pharmacologist, one of the founders of clinical pharmacology, was arrested by the Gestapo and murdered in the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1942. He would have been very aware of the role chemicals take in the construction of our mind/body complex, but nothing could have saved him from the mindset that took over the people who inhabited that part of the world at that particular time. I have to have faith that we will never return to those dark days, but to ensure that, we will I'm afraid have to have the courage to stand up to bullies and those that encourage them to think that aggressive action is the only catalyst for change. 

I would of course like to think that art can be a catalyst for change. Because if doesn't offer either / or answers and gives us a series of open ended responses to how we can feel about the world, hopefully it celebrates difference and offers opportunities for reflection and speculation that lead to the opening out of imaginative new worlds. 

Sketchbook drawing

I often walk and draw. I look for things that both remind me of the thoughts I have been having and which I think might also become metaphors for them. In the case of the drawing above made in West Wittering last year, I was thinking about the sea as a constant devourer of the land and of how our bodies can be thought of as landscapes. Protruding spiral cut metal rods, emerge from a beach, their concrete base covered by seaweed; this rib-like structure, reminding me of work I had made that was itself a reflection on Japanese kusiizu images, those graphic depictions of corpses in the process of decay; images that were used by Buddhists to meditate upon the fragility of life and the reality of death. The processes of life are inseparable from those of death, there being a constant oscillation between the two states. In the acceptance of this we remove our constant internal suffering by coming to an understanding of the true nature of reality. Making a drawing of what you are seeing slows you down, it engages you in a dialogue with the materials of recording and the ability of your own body to shape those materials into a vision of what is seen. In doing this, contemplation begins and your breathing changes, becoming deeper and more in tune with the landscape you are within. I would argue that drawing is itself also therefore a process of life and that it is in many ways a form of meditation. My own image bank has recently been dedicated to visualising how we internally feel and these images are imaginatively conceived in the drawings I make of my external world. The process of drawing is internalising my perceptions of the external world. As these perceptions are recorded, they become as internalised things, not unlike those other internal objects that I think of as my body's organs or the scientific illustrations such as the 50S ribosomal subunit of E. coli that I have also recently been looking at. This personal narrative becomes a story out of which emerges the things I make as art, products of my own life's processes.

See also:

Why interoception?

Drawing and politics 1

Drawing and politics 2

Drawing and politics 3

Drawing and politics 4

What is embodiment?

The fold

Scale

Rene Magritte "The Portrait of Stephy Langui"

In Magritte's image is it scale or size difference that makes an impact on the viewer? It's interesting to compare his image with one of Spiderman, drawn I think by Mark Bagley.

The image of Spiderman makes me feel small, whilst Magritte's painting makes me think about size constancy. Scale in an image it seems to me is more an embodied emotional response. I remember for the first time walking the streets of New York and being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the buildings. My body felt awe at the dizzying heights I was seeing. Perhaps that's what I'm getting at, scale at an emotional level is embodied; yes the buildings were big but the impact was emotional, their size was making me feel small. 

Scale is another of those vital visual elements that we use to create meaning. Scale is very different to size and although related to visual proportion, I tend to think of it acting more emotionally. Size refers to the absolute, physical measurements of an object, whereas scale is the relative size of an object compared to another, usually a standard of measurement as in the 1:72 scale that Airfix model plane kits used to be when I made them as a boy or human scale, a concept that references spaces and objects designed around the physical dimensions and capabilities of the human body. Size is objective, you can measure it, while scale is both objective and relationally subjective, for instance the 1:72 scale of an Airfix model allows you to objectively work out how big the original plane would have been, but scale can also be about the fact that the situation we find ourselves in as humans overpowers us, such as when we travel into the mountains and the scale of everything is awesome. In this case scale also could relate to the sublime, some scales being beyond comprehension. Scale is therefore about how big or small something feels within a relational context, for instance we can feel as if we are the wrong scale, as in those science fiction films that explore the consequences of miniaturisation or giantism. 

Gary Mayes: Storyboard for Fantastic Voyage story for Observer TV commercial

Scene from the 1954 sci-fi classic 'Them!'

Gulliver's Travels is the classic text on relative scale. Thomas Morten illustrated the 1864 edition, whereby we find at one point Gulliver coming across giants, the Brobdingnagians, that make him feel very small, whilst at another point in the book, he finds himself of giant size in relation to the inhabitants of Lilliput.  

On first encountering the Brobdingnagians

Gulliver in Lilliput: 1864 Edition of Swift's Gulliver's Travels

My last post was on proportion and human proportion in relation to scale is about how we physically and psychologically interact with our environment. It bridges the setting of the mathematical ratio of objects to a norm (scale) and the relative size of the parts within a form (proportion). Another way to think about this is that size is used to describe something (E.g. a woman is 5 feet seven inches high) and scale to compare one size of a thing with something else that it is related to. (The model of a train is half the size of the original) Scale can emotionally overwhelm or become attached to a feeling such as vulnerability, whilst size can be big or small, but this only becomes emotionally resonant when compared to something else and once we begin comparing we move into the realm of scale. Using a low viewpoint in drawing, such as in the scene from 'Them!' image above, is an effective technique to exaggerate scale, either making subjects appear immense, monumental and heroic or small, insignificant and dominated. This approach, often called a "worm's-eye view" or "low-angle shot," is often coupled with a bird's eye view or high angle shot in films, whereby swapping positioning is used to manipulate perspective to create a drama based on changing power dynamics.

The classic superhero view

Kings always used to have their thrones mounted on a dais, preferably with steps leading up to it. This meant that they controlled their viewing angle, being able to look down on their subjects, whilst their subjects looked up to them. Scale in this instance being to do with power and authority. On a day to day basis this might be something as simple as someone putting height-increasing insoles or heel lifts inside your shoes in order to look taller than you really are. Yes you are also actually taller, but your emotional response to the situation is related to the fact that you feel taller than someone else. 

Drawing for an artist's book

We play games with scale. The small people like marks made on the drawing above are there to help give scale to the figure with a burning back. For these biro squiggles the larger figure takes on landscape proportions and they in turn can be read as both small and or normal sized humans by someone looking at the drawing. 

Cosmic scale

Cosmic scale is often used to communicate a sense of the insignificance of our human scale of measurement. But as we go down in scale at some point the spaces of the quantum world open out and they can appear as immense as the universe itself. 

Breathing

The image above of 'breathing' that I made some time ago, being an early attempt to embed cosmic scale into the everyday. 

The cosmic human

When I was reading accounts of Chinese medicine I came across the idea of the body as being both of human and cosmic scale. In response, I attempted to fuse some of my interoceptual imagery, with a more 'heavenly' view. I do though realise that my own internal image bank still  includes the figure of Eternity as visualised in 1960s Doctor Strange comics. Back as a teenager I was fascinated by Steve Ditko's invention of 'Eternity', an image that would in the late 60s be further developed by Gene Colan. The way those artists envisioned the personification of an idea like eternity, has stayed with me and as I get older, I look back on what was invented for a cheap popular medium and think that perhaps what was done then had far more significance than we ever imagined at the time. 

Steve Ditko

Gene Colan

I have to acknowledge that I still find those 1960s images powerful and that my early fascination with comics is perhaps still one of the most important influences on my own image making. A conceptual fusion of Cézanne and Steve Ditko would probably underly my idea of the perfect image. Do I dare ask an AI programme to look at that? 

What AI came up with

It is interesting to look at what a current AI system does with the question, I used ChatGPT. It's the first time I have tried to use AI as an image generator and although it makes a decent fist of a fusion between the two sources, it doesn't really touch upon what I was thinking about, which was much more an approach to image making than a fixed image. "Here you are" the software seems to say, offering a solution that at first sight appears to be rather sophisticated, but it doesn't have my own awareness of that uncertain certainty that lies behind human perception. Cézanne's struggle was not about a final 'look', it was a process of human engagement with looking and the materials of its capture. Ditko, unlike Cézanne who was trying to record a series of perceptions, was trying to illustrate a story. I had to write a script for the AI to work to and I suppose I could keep editing that script, but it would be hard to eliminate the "Here you are" firm 'answer' that is produced, even if I asked the AI to involve that uncertain certainty, I don't think it could actually 'know' what that was, because it is not embodied. In this gap lies the difference between fine art and illustration. The AI it seems to me loses the human scale, it has no touch, it has never climbed a mountain or tried to draw one from an embodied experience.

Scale is in my world an embodied emotional register. I find the cosmic scale that AI produced a bit too like wallpaper but it is an image that asks me questions. I'm not ready to use the undoubted fascinating properties of AI yet but I cant discount the fact that it is here and is rapidly changing the landscape within which my images are seen. 

See also:

Visual proportion 

The vertical

Perspective

On seeing a plant in a garden

AI and drawing

Gulliver's Travels 1900 reprint using Thomas Morten's illustrations

Visual Proportion

Visual proportion can be thought of in different ways. For instance, we can use it to think about how the relative sizes of different parts of an artwork may shape meaning. In this case proportion is about the relationship of the size of one element when compared to another, something that can also be thought of as relative visual weight. Rudolf Arheim defined visual weight as a, "visual force" or, "psychological attraction" that determines an element's prominence, balance and "pull" within a composition. Size when thinking of proportion is the main element, however other factors also have to be taken into consideration. They are of course the basic visual elements that any art and design foundation student would have to explore during their first term, but it is perhaps worth setting them out again and thinking about how proportionally they might effect the read of any situation, as all forms in a composition can have their visual presence enhanced or diminished by applying any of the visual elements below, in any combination.

Colour: Warm colours advance and tend to visually weigh more than cool colours. Red is often considered the heaviest or most energetic colour and yellow the lightest but a colour can be tonally dark or light and have a different saturation, so a light red might be outweighed by a mustard yellow.
Tone or value: On a white ground, dark elements have more visual weight than light elements.
Position: Elements located higher in the composition are usually perceived to weigh more than elements located lower in the composition. The further from the centre or dominant area of a composition, the greater the visual weight an element can have. Elements in the foreground carry more weight than elements in the background. However this can depend on the shape of the rectangle the elements have to operate within; a long thin horizontally orientated rectangle, may reinforce the visual weight of other horizontal elements within the lower part of the rectangle.
Texture: Textured elements appear heavier than non-textured objects. Texture can make an element appear three-dimensional, which can give apparent mass and therefore implied physical weight to a form.
Shape: Objects with a regular, clear shape appear heavier than objects with an irregular or softer edged shape. This can be related to: Depth of field and focus: Just as with a camera you can bring something into and out of focus, you can draw forms softer or sharper in relation to an imagined depth of field, the objects in focus having more visual weight. 

Orientation: Vertical elements can in certain instances appear visually more powerful than horizontal objects and in some cases diagonal elements carry the most weight. Orientation is very closely allied to position and of course you can mix and blend any of the above to give the eyes an exciting time.

As you bring these various elements together you will find that other issues become more important, such as contrast: Contrast draws attention to an element. so it will appear visually heavier than its surroundings. You can use contrast with any of the elements above and in various ways such as by using the 70/30 rule, which is explained in detail in the later part of this post. Therefore you could have a majority of elements having hard edges and clearly defined shapes and just one with soft focus; in this case you may well find the normally insignificant soft edged object becomes the most forceful. You may also want to think about density: Packing more elements into a given space increases the visual weight of the space. For example compare images of Annette Messager's 'My Vows', with Malevich's Black Circle. However in this case we also have to consider the fact that Messager's circle hangs in the lower half of the frame, therefore the emphasis is on its weight, whilst Malevich's sits in the top half, therefore it appears to rise up and float.

Density relates to perceived physical weight: We know that an elephant weighs more than a balloon. An image of an elephant can therefore feel as if it weighs more visually than an image of a balloon, because we transfer a real world expectancy into the imagined world of an image.

Laura Such: lead balloon 

However any rule is easily broken.

Intrinsic interest: Some things are more visually interesting than others, they might for instance be very intricate or unusual, but it might simply be that the observer has a fascination for something, perhaps they are a tree surgeon and therefore any tree in a composition will stand out for them. Intrinsic interest is related to the fact that visual weight can also be about relative psychological or social importance. For instance when we find this situation in Children's, Egyptian or Medieval paintings and drawings, visual weight might also have to account for the fact that one thing is drawn much bigger than another, because it is more important to the person constructing the image. For instance a child they may well think of themselves as being more important than a house.

From the Kellogg Collection

In Egyptian painting social class or ranking is primarily conveyed through hierarchical scale, whereby major gods and pharaohs are depicted largest to signify their power.

Egyptian painting: Social position is represented by size

Cecco di Pietro: Madonna and Child with Donors

In the Cecco di Pietro image above the donors are tiny in relation to the Madonna, because they are relatively unimportant. 

Miró

The artist Miró was someone who used to play with proportion to give psychological energy to his paintings. The red form that dominates the image above is in dialogue with both the linear elements and another circular blue shape and although these forms are non figurative, we still feel that some sort of psychological positioning is taking place. Proportion in this case being used quite differently to Rothko, who uses proportion as a form of spatial division. 

Rothko

You feel in Rothko as if he uses proportion more as a landscape metaphor. A large block of colour resting in the upper half of a canvas, triggering a sensation similar to one we get when looking at a flat landscape that is dominated by sky.

In all of these cases artists are using proportion for effect. By manipulating it, a subject can be made to seem psychologically strong, supportive, weak, unimportant etc. but it can also be something that can trigger feelings of elation, mystery, vastness, claustrophobia etc.

However proportion can also refer to what is 'right' and in proportion. Sometimes this is fixed by a canon. For instance, the Ancient Greek canon of proportion, as formulated by Polykleitos in the 5th century BC, established a mathematical, system for representing the ideal human form.

Doryphoros: After Polykleitos of Argos (Greek, ca. 480/475–415 BCE)

Polykleitos created a measurement system based on a mathematical formula in which the human body was divided into measured parts that all related to one another. The end result, as in the 'Spear Thrower' above, was an expression of what was called symmetria. In art of the High Classical period (ca. 450–400 BCE), symmetria was not only about proportion and balance, it was also a way to give life to the inanimate. The body of the Spear Thrower, (Doryphoros) stands in a contrapposto position. I.e. his weight rests on his right leg, freeing his left to bend. This causes the right hip to shift upwards in relation to the left; the left shoulder therefore rises and the right drops. His body is both brought into a state of equilibrium and energised through this counterbalancing act. Always in movement but at the same time balanced and in proportion. 

Although closely related, this type of visual construction is sometimes confused with proportional measuring, the technique of comparing the sizes of different parts of a subject to each other (e.g., width to height) rather than using absolute, fixed units, as in the canon of Polykleitos. It involves using a tool like a pencil at arm's length to establish ratios, a checking process that is supposed to ensure accurate and consistent scaling when drawing from life. 

Euan Uglow: Loaf

Euan Uglow's studio when painting 'Loaf' in the 1980s

The measurement of visual proportion relies on establishing relationships and you can see in the image of Uglow's studio above, how tricky this can be. 

I was looking at this recently in my post on the vertical. These two different approaches to proportion are though closely related, because in order to develop a canon of proportion, many measurements had to be taken from actual examples. For instance Albrecht Dürer developed a comprehensive, mathematical canon of human proportion, as was laid out in his 1528 treatise Four Books on Human Proportion, which looked at the construction of faces and bodies using geometric measurements. His system, diverged from the canon of Polykleitos and other's by recognising the diversity of human measurements, and trying to reconcile these with consistent measurements for constructing the head. I.e. he realised that all canons would at one time or another have begun with measuring what was actually out there and a canon would have been fixed by then finding a best average. But one person's best average is different to another's and in fact Durer's heads that rely on his proportional system always look very stylised and awkward to me.  

Durer: a study in human proportion

However we can also exaggerate proportions to emphasise something. For example, a cartoonist may distort a proportion in order to create an image that highlights a particular quality of character that they wish to give to the subject. 

Dave Brown: Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson

By elongating Mandelson's tongue the cartoonist Dave Brown suggests how he was able to get into Gordon Brown's head. It is also interesting to see how Dave Brown exaggerates the proportions of their relative faces, Gordon Brown becoming like an old saggy featured Basset Hound, and Mandelson more like a sharp-featured spiv with elf ears.

As well as the various canons in art, we have proportional rules, these are in fact proportional ratios, such as the typical screen aspect ratio for TV and contemporary film, which is 16:9. (Width is always first, then height) In painting the 70/30 rule is supposed to create visual interest and balance by having a larger area (70%) for background and a smaller, contrasting area (30%) for details, accents or focal points, which is supposed to prevent monotony and to guide the eye to look for the point of interest. This principle applies to colours, textures, detail levels, as well as the overall composition, which is supposed to 'create dynamic yet harmonious visuals, whether in a painting, illustration or interior design.' (sic). The way it works is to set up opposites, such as light vs. dark, warm vs. cool, big vs. small, red vs. green, finished vs. unfinished, man made vs. natural and obviously to have 70% of one and 30% of the other. In painting for instance loose brush strokes can be set against sharp detail, in the case of the Richard Schmid portrait, by having 70% of the surface area loosely treated, the more detailed head is now the focal point for the observer.

Richard Schmid

This can work for warm and cool contrasts as well. A small amount of warm colours can make a larger area of cool colours vibrate. In the image below, the pinks on the cheek and the red sitting over the man's left shoulder are used to excite the cools.

Harley Brown: Pastel

I'm not personally convinced by this rule but the idea that a small amount of one thing can be set in contrast against another, in order to achieve a visual effect is clearly something often used by artists to create off symmetry visual interest. I.e. differing proportions are aesthetically useful. 

People use this idea much more clearly when we sit outside of the art business. A pie chart for instance works by representing data as proportional slices of a circle, where the entire circle equals 100% (or 360°) of a total dataset. Each slice's area and angle correspond to the size of a specific category, allowing for easy comparison of parts-to-whole relationships.

A pie chart representing what the arts are worth to Southeast Alaska. Painting, carving, theatre, music and other creative pursuits generate at least $60 million a year in business.

In the image above we can see how the arts are represented to the world of business. But artists can use the idea too. For instance, Christine Sun Kim, an artist I have written about in the past, uses pie charts to map personal experiences.

Christine Sun Kim 

Proportion is very closely related to scale, which is another of those important visual elements that I haven't yet got round to writing about in this blog, so there is going to have to be a post on that too in the near future. But for now I'll leave you with Goya's 'Colossus', an image that uses scale dramatically and which has always made the hairs on my neck rise. The atrocities of war we enact on each other, are in Goya's mind, a result of letting loose a giant monster that dwells within all of us, Goya's image makes visible that inner demon which has now stepped out into the world. As we look at Goya's painting, we can perhaps see our own monsters, those inner thoughts we rarely acknowledge, thoughts that have to emerge at times or we will like my grandfather, have to beat our heads against the door lintel in order to quieten that inner clamour.  War is upon us unfortunately once again, and we need to remind ourselves that this should not be the only way to resolve differences. As boys we used to play with soldiers, our inner needs satisfied by model wars. The more I listen to the news it seems as if some politicians play at war as if it still involves only toys; the consequences are though to those involved all too real; their suffering is beyond comprehension, as children die as a result of bombs and missiles raining down from the sky, we are all complicit in not demanding an end to conflicts driven by the foolishness of old men. 

Goya

See also:

The vertical

Drawing, measuring and the body

Mathematics, rightness and underlying beauty 

Mathematical shapes of interest

Translation between languages

Life drawing

Hanging work for an exhibition

I shall miss you David Hockney

Tea Painting in an Illusionistic Style: 1961

David Hockney seems to have been in the background or somewhere about ever since I decided to become an artist in the 1960s. The first ever etching I made was of a Typhoo Tea packet. "Just do something", I was told. I thought if Hockney could make something interesting out of a Typhoo Tea image, so could I. I wonder where those prints went? Of course he had got there first but we all need to get some sort of leg up when we get started. It was the fact he was working class that endeared him to me. He wasn't from an arty family, and he had enough confidence in himself to go where only the rich, posh boys used to go. If Hockney could escape Bradford, I could escape Dudley. 

He could draw and draw well. Frank Lisle had taught him when he was a student in Bradford and it was Frank, the then college principal who ran the rule over myself when I pitched up at the Jacob Kramer College in Leeds. Frank insisted that all his staff had to be able to draw; not long after I started he sat in on a life drawing class I took, telling me afterwards what I had done wrong, what I had missed and what he thought I had done well. However he saw enough to keep me on as a part-timer. Frank would make all the staff draw from the model, he liked to test people out and he was very wary of any staff who couldn't draw as well as he expected. This attitude forced me to draw more and improve on my basic ability, which wasn't really that good. I was never a 'natural' drawer, but I did know that if you persisted at it you could get better. After all these years I'm still practicing, each week finding out something else about either myself or the world around me, things that you can only grasp through drawing. I can imagine Frank setting Hockney some hard tasks, but I'm also sure Hockney would have surprised Frank with his ability. Frank would have made an impression on the young Hockney. He only had one eye and wore an eyepatch, rather like a pirate, he was a commanding figure and had a military air. He fitted his role as principal very well, somehow he had fused his military and artistic personas, accuracy in drawing being a training that would also equip you as a rifleman. 

Hockney turned up at Newport once when I was a DipAD student. I think it was John Selway that brought him in, they had both been at the Royal College at the same time. Selway back in the 60s being perhaps the more successful young artist but a return to Wales didn't do his career any favours. I remember Hockney showing us a drawing whereby a big plant obscured the feet of the model, he laconically told us he put the plant there because he didn't like drawing feet. I don't remember much else, I think I had a hangover that day, I did tend to drink far too much in those days. I was also going through a very conceptual phase in my work and had decided that Hockney was rather old fashioned, so I was not in a very receptive mood when he came. More fool me. 

The first exhibition that I had work in that Hockney did too was New Art in Yorkshire, which was held in Leeds in 1987. New Art in Yorkshire was something that emerged out of the workings of the Yorkshire Contemporary Art Group and was spearheaded by James Hamilton, who had recently taken over what had been the Park Square Gallery in Leeds. I was part of the organising group and had been asked to become one of the selectors. The others, if I remember rightly, were Sutapa Biswas, whose 'Housewives with Steak-Knives' image had recently gone viral and Joanna Mowbury, who had just completed the first sculpture focused residency for the Artist in Industry project and had just held a well received one person show of the work she had completed as part of that residency. Alongside them I felt like I often do as if I didn't belong, my impostor syndrome kicking in big time.

 

The New Art in Yorkshire catalogue

I don't know how it had been organised, but David Hockney had some work in the exhibition, but it didn't go through the selection process, he was an invited artist and as a selector, so was I. I would have to wait until 2020 until we were both in an exhibition together again. In the exhibition 'Untitled, 2020. Three perspectives on the art of the present’ at the Palazzo Grassi, Punta della Dogana, in Venice, I was showing work from 1991, 'Confessions of a house owning socialist', 12 etchings with aquatint and Hockney was showing drawing work from 1983, 'Ian and me ii', 'Ian and me iii' 1983 and 'Ian and me iv'. Just to have occasionally had work in the vicinity of his was a privilege. 

Moving to Yorkshire meant that I was constantly reminded of Hockney's presence, even though he had moved over to the States to live, he was seen in Yorkshire as an ever present icon. At one time I was asked to comment about his work on a TV program, I think it was 'Look North', I was asked about the artistic worth of his drawings for a new telephone directory cover; in those days it was big news him getting engaged in such things. I thought it was wonderful that he could still have an obvious fondness and affection for the area and that I thought he was working in the tradition of Raoul Dufy. Not that hardly any of the viewers would have known who Dufy was. 

Bradford and District telephone directory 1989

The older I got the more I looked again at Hockney's work and in fact as I have just had work on exhibition at Salt's Mill, I spent quite a lot of time recently re-looking at his art and it doesn't disappoint. They still have in Salt's Mill his fax machine work done in the same year as the telephone directory.

Tennis: Fax machine print

They also have many of the prints made from IPad drawings and work from his Bradford College of Art days. He is a very good illustrator as well as a fine artist. 

Above all Hockney was a very bright thinker. He understood the visual world better than most and he saw opportunities within what for some people could be quite mundane situations. He was still working through the legacy of Cézanne, therefore it wasn't about the things portrayed, it was about how what was portrayed was looked at and seen. That makes everything interesting, because the struggle is to find a form that carries something within itself that reveals how it was perceived. 

Three Vases on a Table, Inside, August: 2025 Acrylic on canvas with collage

The image above painted less than a year ago exemplifies his interests. It's not a great image, but it contains a raft of ideas, some of which we have seen Hockney deal with more successfully in the past, but as an 87 year old, he could be excused from having not been in the best of form when he made the image. The image's problem is one of reconciliation between the various elements. Yes they all sit in the same pictorial space, but they don't 'belong' in the places that they have been put. The views out of the windows are too static, the use of photography to indicate the far distance is too easy a solution. He is though still searching for that image that will finally resolve for him that conundrum of active seeing and the still image. The best of his images that take on the same or similar issues resolve these issues and you not oinly believe in the spaces he constructs and the forms that he renders but their internal logic gives them a gravitas that sits him in a company with Piero. 

I watched him from a distance one day when he was going round Tate Britain looking at paintings. He was mainly looking at Frances Bacon paintings, and was totally absorbed. Bacon was obviously doing something that fascinated him. You might think that the two painters would be in sensibility matters miles away, but I could guess what he was looking at. Bacon manages to compress movement into his images by the way he handles the paint.  I'm sure Hockney was trying to learn something from the way the paint was handled. In particular how Bacon was able to trap time in paint. 

The last encounter where I really felt his recent presence was when I was part of the team that was dismembering his Bridlington studio in 2013. The college had been contacted by one of Hockney's team and we were told that Hockney had instructed them to contact a local art college and see if they wanted to take what they could from the studio he was vacating. Of course we would. The college hired a lorry and three of us went over to Bridlington to get what we could. The studio was on an industrial estate, and we drove the lorry straight in from the street, the industrial roller door being of a scale to allow large trucks to transport work in and out. One wall had been fitted with wooden blocks that were obviously there so that canvases could be fitted together on the wall to create his huge landscape images. There were brushes with long handles, wide brushes, long bristle, short bristle and other types of good quality brushes, buckets of paint tubes and several unused linen canvases. We were not allowed to take anything with a mark on it, so for instance I remember one canvas with just a single brush stroke on it and his team wouldn't allow us to have it. There were models of exhibitions made of foam board, with small images of his works glued in where they should go and several empty  sketchbooks, that were made of excellent quality watercolour paper, as well as a pile of excellent unused art papers but most of all for myself it was about the experience of an empty space that had his ghostly traces everywhere you looked. While we worked to load the lorry, Hockney's assistants were either cataloging all his works on paper, which we never got to see, or just checking on us, making sure we did not accidentally hoover up something of importance. We took everything we could and all of it was given out to students over the next two to three years. I would have liked to have had a sketchbook, but it was all put away in containers and the process of eking out the materials to the students, so that they lasted for a couple of years, was something managed by the then technician and painting staff. It was so generous of Hockney an his team, a result I suppose of them all needing to get out of Bridlington as fast as possible after the unfortunate death of one of his assistants. 

But now he is gone. But he is also everywhere. I'm in Chichester at the moment and this morning we visited a small private gallery to see a flower painting exhibition and in the foyer was a copy of David Hockney's 'Dog Days', another reminder that he could make interesting images of most things that came his way. He is so popular because people can usually find something that he has made pictures of that they recognise as being part of their world. He is therefore, people think, both approachable and understandable. 

Hockney must have touched many lives because of his global media presence. I saw several Facebook posts this week about him, each one detailing the moment or moments where people's paths had crossed with his or connections made. We seem to have to measure ourselves in some way in relation to how much star dust we have managed to collect from our vicarious contacts with those who are famous. Most of us will at some time be guilty of the, "I knew him/her once" comment, usually followed by a sort of, "There but for fortune go you or I" quip, as the song has it. 

I still go back to his work, especially when he is questioning how we see. His graphic invention when trying to draw intangible things like water, being of the highest level and because of this I have included examples of his work several times in this blog. 

Above all I always felt that his art was generous and open, he never hid behind dense theory and yet at the same time he was always happy to explain himself in simple, direct language. He could draw well and more importantly drew with purpose. There is a straightforward love of looking that comes through in nearly everything he made and therefore a reminder that joy in seeing and a celebration of life, are wonderful gifts to pass on to others. 

I shall miss you David Hockney, I shall miss your eloquence and common sense attitude to the business of making art; you were able to make it both accessible and wonderful at the same time, never letting its mystery and magic go unacknowledged and yet at the same time opening doors for ordinary people to gain entry into its appreciation. 

See also:

Drawing water

Pouring water

More drawing devices

David Hockney retrospective

RIP John Selway