Drawing : Drawing and Mindfulness: Part four: A Material Conversation

Sohan Qadri

If I had to pick out one artist that would be an example for any of us that wish to take the drawing and mindfulness approach onto a further level, it would be Sohan Qadri. He used to approach his work in a way that was very similar to a ritual or religious experience. Qadri was influenced by both Tantric-Vajrayan yogi practices and Sufi mysticism. He developed his spiritual ideals through meditation, dance and music, eventually deciding to focus his art making on the potential inherent in the properties of paper. Qadri worked with heavyweight papers that gave him the opportunity to engage with his paper's structural and surface textural potential. In particular by soaking it and carving into it in several stages, and by applying inks and dyes between each stage, he was able to attune himself to the paper's properties. In the process, paper was transformed from a two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional medium, or thin sculpture. In particular he developed controlled rhythmic ways of marking the papers, often using a careful repetition of incisions into the paper as he meditated. Each layer of marks would be followed by another layer of intense colour wash, the inks and dyes soaking into the newly disturbed paper creating powerful saturations and glowing surfaces of colour, that grew even more intense as each colour layer was absorbed into the surface below. Layer after layer of colour would be applied, each application regarded as if it was a paper's ritual bath of colour immersion. Qadri worked for many years, looking for a way to shape an art practice that would be an effortless method of creation perfectly in tune with his yogic practices. By respecting the crafting of paper, and by then furthering his awareness of that craft by engaging at an intense level with the fibrous nature of his material, he developed a way of working that was in total harmony with his paper's inception.

Sohan Qadri

Before embarking on this next stage you will need to make a decision as to whether or not to make your own paper. If you have access to the right resources this can be a very useful thing to do because you will develop a deeper understanding of your paper's nature and it will help you to become engaged with it's materiality. There are lots of resources on 'You Tube' and the university has resources and technicians that will advise you on how to do this. If you want to begin with ready made paper, that's also fine, but you may need to spend more time exploring the surface properties of your paper in order to develop an understanding of its nature and how it can be worked with. See older posts on paper to get an idea of the possible range of papers to use.

You will need to use colour in order to reveal the changes you make to the paper, and colour will need to be applied between every stage of your paper transformation, so you will also need to experiment with dyes and inks and explore the way they effect your chosen paper.

Once you feel confident that you understand your paper, you need to familiarise yourself with the tools you will work with to make marks into it as well as the applicators for your dyes and inks.

Your paper marking tools and colour applicators will be vital to you. The process of making these tools can itself be part of the mind letting go, by gathering up objects and transforming them into tools for marking paper, you begin to see the world from the point of view of inter-object relationships. Perhaps as you take apart an old cheese grater and fit handles to its various parts, this activity might take you into thinking about your hand and how it holds things, of the sharpness of the different surfaces of the grater, of the potential for these surfaces to be used as scratching tools for roughening up your paper. (Typically you will make or find scratching tools, but also sandpapers, incising implements, polishing things and embossing tools) We have looked at making your own tools before.

The development of an organised almost ritual approach is going to be vital and you will need to embody or materialise your thoughts as part of this process.

You will need to begin with at least 20 sheets of your chosen paper.

Take your first sheet of paper and position it in a portrait relationship with yourself. It may be lying on the ground in front of you or on your table. You need to see it as a whole. It is like you bilaterally symmetrical, the the right half mirrors the left half. Meditate on this for a while, what does it mean to you? Are there any 'off centred' aspects that you might want to think about? Are you left sided or right sided?

Now make a mark on the paper. Just one. But be as inventive as you can about how you make this mark. Look at the paper and feel for how this mark has effected your awareness of the the rest of the paper. What are its qualities, where is it? Is this mark nearer the top, or closer to one side or the other? Now put the paper to one side and make another mark on a new sheet of paper. Do this carefully and each time try to vary the quality of the mark and positioning. Carry on until 19 sheets of paper have a mark and one is left unmarked. As you make each mark, feel for how it relates to your own body, does that mark down on the left relate to your left foot, if so what does it feel like?

Now take up the first sheet again and make a line down the centre of the paper that represents your own awareness of the fact you have a backbone. Is this a single incised line, is it composed of several short marks that visually appear to become a line when seen from a distance? Once the first line is made, pass on to the next sheet and the next until you have made 18 different vertical lines. These can be lines made by pushing pins through the paper, dragging a compass point across the paper surface, incising with an empty biro, drawing with your fingernail, scraping with a knife or scratching with your cheese grater tool.

Once you have made these lines paint a colour selected from your dye mix across the first one and spread this colour right to the edges of the paper. Now look at what you have done and let your mind wander into it.

Do this with 17 of the sheets.

Put the papers aside and begin the same process on the first sheet once again, make a mark, look at how this changes the relationships set out between what you have done already. Then once you have done this with 16 sheets, move on and make another vertical line on 15 sheets.

Now paint your dye across 14 of these sheets.

Put these images in a row and look at them, what is happening, look at the difference between a mark that has had only one covering of dye and the others with two, compare the white sheet with dyed sheets.

Take 13 sheets. Look at your two lines on the first sheet and in your minds eye thicken one. It will become a rectangle, perhaps a long thin one, or if it expands out to the edge of the paper a much more regular rectangular shape. Now make the rectangle you see by building a surface of regular marks. These could be horizontal or vertical scratches, regular punch holes, overlapping hammered marks, regular scratchings from your cheese grater. What ever you can do to make a continuous surface that stops at 4 straight edges.

Paint a dye over 12 of these sheets of paper.

Take 11 sheets and look at what has happened to your other line. Is it lost under the rectangle you have made, does it stand clear, can you still see part of it? Make another line designed to reinforce awareness of this line. Do you make a shattered disjointed line next to a clear sharp line, or do you echo it by making another sharp line but how far away should it go? Once you have made these 11 new lines, paint the dye over 10 of your sheets of paper.

Now lay out all 20 sheets, look at them closely. You have in effect been playing with a particular variation of Paul Klee's idea of moving 'from point to line to plane'. However by adding colour you have included a very emotional ingredient to the sequence that will hopefully ensure that this is not a cerebral exercise. The fact that only changes in the paper surface are used to capture changes in colour intensity should also make you far more aware of the paper as a material, rather than as a background on which to work.

As you look at the sheets you have worked on hopefully one will stand out as being of interest in some way, you will be drawn to one of the sheets for whatever reason. Take it out of the presentation, look at it for a little longer and add a fold to the structure. Work on the back of the paper to ensure the fold is sharp then flatten out the paper and fold the paper again in the opposite direction. Then flatten back out. Now paint your dye over the whole surface.

Pick another sheet of paper from your remaining sheets and look at this. Now cover a proportion of the surface with a sheet of thick clear paper. Whatever is left uncovered lightly sand with rough sandpaper, or scratch over with a set of regular marks. Now paint your dye over the whole surface.

Take another sheet. This time close your eyes and feel with your hand over the surface. With your eyes still closed take a sharp implement and scratch into the surface feeling for the difference you are making. Now look at what you have done and dye the paper surface.

Take another sheet and do nothing to it. Now take a different coloured dye and paint it all over the surface.

Take out another sheet. Using a bowl of clean water and a rag wipe away as much dye/colour as you can from one area of the sheet of paper.

On another sheet make a straight line one inch wide from one side of the image to another. This can be an any angle. Make the line in anyway you want, it can be dyed, scratched into, embossed, whatever you feel is right.

On the next sheet make a square anywhere on the paper in any way you wish using any of the techniques already used to mark the paper.

Now take a sheet and make a tear into it.

Take another sheet and make another tear, this time you are to dye the sheet once the tear is made.

Draw a circle into the next sheet of paper using any of the paper marking techniques you have been using.

Now lay out all of your sheets of paper again, look at them and think about how they might relate to yourself. This is a very personal thing and how you make the connection is up to you, remember there is no right or wrong way to do this.

Pick one sheet, close you eyes and feel it, follow the lines and surfaces with your fingers and build up a picture in your head. Now look at it from a distance, and feel for the differences between sight and touch. Now decide how to respond to what you have felt or seen or both by making either a mark, a series of marks, a line or a shape. You could work on this sheet with eyes closed, by working whilst looking very hard, or alternating between looking and feeling. Use any combination of the techniques you have introduced.

Pick another sheet and reinforce one element by painting into it with a different coloured dye.

Pick another sheet and do the same but this time using the dominant coloured dye found on the chosen sheet. In effect this would be blue on blue or red on red, a heightening of saturation or intensity.

On another sheet remove a large area of information by sanding or any other appropriate erasure technique.

On the next sheet to do the same thing but this time to erase within a sharp boundary. Such as working within a taped out boundary or using a clean sheet of paper to mask out the area you are working in.

Repeat this process on two more sheets and then apply dye across both sheets.

Finally, choose a sheet and simply dye the edges, letting the colour fade out into the existing colour field.

At this point it is time to stop. Go back reflect on these images and see what has happened.

The next stage is up to you.

You will now have a much better understanding of your chosen paper. Do you move on to explore a different sort? Are there any sets of marks or forms that particularly intrigued you? Do you begin the next exploration by starting with these? Do you begin this time with a square sheet of paper rather than a rectangle? Do you use tearing techniques alone? What if all your marks were punched into the paper? What is it about the colour that works for you? How would you approach dyeing paper if you had to do this again? What if all your marks were confined to one half of the paper?

The next stage will be about focus and it is your decision as to what that is.