Stained glass: Finishing

The finished panel

As you can see from the image above the stained glass panel I have been working on for over a year has finally been finished. It's approximately A1 size and it was designed as a response to the fact that when I started the project I had plantar fasciitis, which meant I couldn't put my foot down without extreme heel pain. As I had been making votives, I decided to use the idea of Sooty as a type of voodoo fetish, interceding to bless the pain and therefore release it. It did eventually go away but not I suspect due to the intersession of Sooty. Even so it was an interesting experience and I have learnt a lot technically and have set up my workshop to be able to undertake quite a few of the glass skills used during the past year. The painting I started out with is this one below, and as always its fascinating to look at how a change in technique totally changes the meaning of what can be almost exactly the same image. 

The original painting 

My last post was about the soldering process, which left me with lots of cleaning to do, most of it due to the deposits of tallow still left on the lead. Once the tallow had been cleaned off the next step was to stabilise the panel with black putty, which  ensures that every section is held securely in place. If the panel was to be used as a window, it would also need to be made weather proof and this stage would ensure rain water would not be able to penetrate it. 

Black putty being applied to all the gaps between the lead and the glass

I had bought myself a tub of stained glass putty a while ago, so had it ready. It's much more expensive than the putty you use to secure the glass in a window and I suspect you could mix your own by staining ordinary putty black but I was in a rush to get everything finished, so had bought a ready mixed tub. There is nearly always a reason for the materials being what they are and when I have tried to go my own way, such as using ordinary soldering flux, things haven't worked. 

Stained Glass Lead Cement Putty Black 1/2 PINT (Approx: £26)

I used an old toothbrush to push the putty into the gaps between the leading and the glass. I was amazed at how much putty would be needed to go into these gaps, and it takes quite a while to work it into each section. A circular movement of the toothbrush seemed best, and as the putty began to settle into the spaces, it lifted off the glass surface. (I was initially worried that it might stick to the glass and be hard to clean off). 

The toothbrush: The black putty is very sticky, like thick runny hunny.

As the gaps become filled, the putty pulls away from the glass surface. 

I then, once all the gaps were filled on one side, with help, I turned the panel over and repeated the process. I had some whiting power left over from when I was printmaking and once the putty was in place on both sides, dusted one side with it. This is to help dry the putty and clean off the panel. Using an old scrubbing brush, I then worked my way across the panel, again using a circular motion and this removed bits of excess putty and at the same time cleaned the glass. This was then repeated on the other side.

Using an old scrubbing brush to remove whiting powder and excess putty.

The window was at last beginning to look how I wanted it to. The too shiny look of the solder had gone, the black of the putty now filling every crevice of the surface, which makes the whole panel look as if it is an old thing; something made back when stained glass was a process embedded into a deeply spiritual way of understanding the world. I was beginning to think that all the effort was at last going to pay off. 

The final part was to get the 'look' of the leading right and to do this I used black stove and grate polish. (£7)

'Stove black'

I used to help my nan polish her black iron stove and this was very like the Zebo polish that we used then. When buffed up with a soft duster or rag, you get a rich dull black, which is what I wanted. These final touches were vital as they gave the panel a very personal feel. The surface looks very hand done, the final finish looking like something that has resulted from several hours of intense one to one application. The Sooty window was meant to be a type of fetish or votive and by virtue of the many hours of work invested into its making, it has human spirit built into it.  

Developing the final patina by polishing

This final part of the process felt intuitively right, perhaps because of the link back to the time helping my nan polish that old black iron stove. 

In order to have a good flat light source behind the panel, I ordered an A1 size, LED lightbox from Amazon, and it fits very neatly, I used it to light the window in order to take the photograph at the top of this post. 

It has been a long and expensive process, I have learnt a huge amount and made a piece of work I am very satisfied with, as it extends the conceptual as well as the emotional and spiritual range that I am trying to communicate with. I have also set up my old studio in such a way that I can now cut glass and grind it into shape, I can cut lead and fit panels together, but what I cant do is paint the glass without access to a specialist kiln. My objective was to see if I could become self sustaining in relation to a craft that I really feel does enhance spiritual 'feeling'. But the reality is that it will have to be a 'supportive' skill, one I use occasionally to enhance my work, rather than as a main focus. 

See also:

Stained glass session one

Stained glass session two

Stained glass session three

Stained glass session four

Stained glass session five

Stained glass session six

Stained glass session seven

Stained glass session eight

Stained glass session nine

Stained glass session ten

Stained glass the leading sessions

Stained glass: soldering

Drawing on transparent drafting film

New wine in old bottles

The Oceanic

Image made in response to listening to someone's experience of tinnitus

I have for some time now been making images in response to people's interoceptual experiences. Sometimes when I do this I can find myself lost in an inner sea of the body and experience it as another universe. To be lost within people's experiences, can sometimes induce a feeling within myself not unlike that one sometimes described as 'oceanic' and when that happens the resulting images can feel cosmic. The image above was a final one made in response to a series of visits to someone trying to communicate what it feels like to hear a sound that doesn't actually exist. Sometimes this was an experience inside the body, but not always, at other times the 'sound' seemed to come from outside. The 'buzz' of sound seeming to be like the sea, a sea that existed inside as well as outside the person experiencing the noise.

I'm sure most of us have at one point or another swum out a little beyond our depths when at the seaside, or on a foreign holiday found ourselves swimming in a deep clear sea on a beautiful sunny day. These can be moments when you just close your eyes and float, letting the sea take you and as you do everything seems to be in that moment, all worries and fears for once dismissed, as you experience a oneness with the moving waters, the sea sound in your ears and the sun above. This is the feeling of the oceanic.

The 'oceanic feeling' was first used as a term by Romain Rolland. De Cruz (2022) states that Sigmund Freud in response to a letter from Rolland, attempted to explain religion as the result of certain cognitive dispositions and saw it as a 'childlike yearning for a fatherly figure'. He took Rolland's idea of “oceanic feeling” (of limitlessness and being connected with the world), as a sort of phenomenological explanation of religious experience. But what if the reality of that experience is of a deeper significance, and in being reminded of how we are totally immersed and interconnected into the world, we begin to see other moments when we are totally 'lost' in our worldly integration. Higgie, (2023, p. 73), quoting Freud, writes that he also linked oceanic states to the times 'when people fall in love and consequently feel as if they are merged with another or are in some way transfigured by the experience'. Higgie (p.74) goes on to point out how Marion Milner widens Freud's vision when she writes that an oceanic state could be experienced moments of artistic creativity, when the unconscious mind lets go of the distinction between me and not me, between seer and seen, and does things that the common sense, conscious mind cannot do.'

My occasional posts on 19th century and early 20th century mystic approaches to how to visualise invisible experiences are I'm sure linked to this feeling. The moment of creativity is something special, even if we only get lost within it momentarily, in those times we let our mind/body dissolve itself into the world via the materials of making. Higgie's book reminded me of the central importance of women to a more mystic tradition of art and it has been very useful in letting me feel connected to a range of approaches to art making that have long been there and it has also reminded me that we need, as Higgie states, 'elements of illusion to cope with reality'. (Ibid, p. 88)

Image produced in response to a conversation about tinnitus

The tinnitus image above was made directly before the one that sits at the top of this post. It is easy to see the relationship and the differences. The spiral remains a very important aspect of the feeling tone but the eye has gone, it was far too obvious and grounded the image in an exterior seeing, rather than opening it out into a more 'mystic' interior life of the invisible. The colour was too predictable and had no real sense of the un-reality of an alien sound. The notes around the edge are annotations taken from a conversation made in response to a previous drawing. I listen, I draw, I take the drawing away and then develop it further. Once satisfied that I have something worthwhile, I take it back to the person I spoke to and we begin another conversation about the relationship between the image and the experience they have had. Gradually the images are changed, a type of co-production emerging. At its best when I let go of my control, an image can arrive that seems to myself at least, literally 'wonderful'.

References.

De Cruz, H. (2022) Religion and Science The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Fall Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), Accessed from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/religion-science/ 15. 1. 25

Higgie, J. (2023) The Other Side: A Journey into Women,  Art and the Spirit World London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson

Coda

It has been great to be chosen as one of the best drawing blogs out there by Feedspot: See: https://bloggers.feedspot.com/drawing_blogs/ for a link to all the ones shortlisted. 

See also:

Art therapy and perceptual research 

Drawing water

The uncertain certainty 

Freud and drawing invisible forces

Ibrahim el Salahi: Pain relief drawings

Sensuous aggregates

On being knocked down by a car at night

There are moments in life when time and space seem to lose their hold on you. For example when I was knocked down by a car when crossing a road and everything was happening at the same time, a sort of clumping of experience in a way very different to 'normality'. Thinking about the experience from a distance I'm reminded of other people's attempts to describe the thing I might call an accelerated intuited moment. The term ‘sensuous aggregate’ is one taken from Husserl who used it to describe a ‘unified intuition’ (Farber, 2006) and is a term used to describe the various feelings and bodily knowledge that come to us through pre-cognitive thought. This ‘sensuous aggregate’ is something that I might also call a ‘feeling tone’ when describing an experience. In both 'Logical Investigations' and 'Ideas' Husserl argues that our perceptual consciousness is based in the “animation” or interpretation of sensory data or hyle. In philosophy, 'hyle' is a noun that means matter, especially matter in its original, unorganised state. In my case a road and a car in the rain at night. It can also refer to anything that receives form from outside itself, i.e. 'that which is formed'. Hyle when brought together with some form of representation, could I think be another type of sensuous aggregate. This is the intuitive or as Williford (2013, p. 1) puts it “in-the-flesh” aspect of perception, something we discover, rather than create, another possible bridge between consciousness and the experienced world. I would argue this is another aspect of what we also call our 'feeling tone'. It's the something that lies behind statements such as, "It's all going well", or "I'm anxious about something", "this is very exciting" or "I'm going to die". The general summation of my response to stimulus, determines my flight or fight response and is the overall judgement my embodied senses are making in response to what is happening out there. That judgement depends on the form I give to the perceptions I receive. 

If so, another way to approach the images I have been making is to see them as diagrams of 'sensuous aggregates'. 

Sensuous: relating to or affecting the senses rather than the intellect.

Aggregates: a whole formed by combining several separate elements.

Often more than one sense is activated at the same time when I have a feeling. So when I'm drawing I try to bring together into one representation more than one feeling tone. Perhaps a sense of cold shiver with a knotted stomach and a vision of an empty landscape on a misty day. 

Deleuze and Guattari in response I presume to their reading of Husserl, stated that art relies on the creation of sensuous aggregates. (Rodowick in Furstenau, 2010, p. 31) So art itself could in some ways be pulled into this clump of aggregates. A clump that has now reminded me of 'the paradox of the heap', a philosophical puzzle that explores the vagueness of language and the difficulty of defining vague concepts. A heap is by definition an amorphous concept, and so is a sensuous aggregate. I know what I think I'm getting at but it might only be poetry that can save me. Heap, gravel, sand etc. out of which we build roads and buildings. But not that, something else.

I thought I saw an angel

It looked like a glowing stone

It was committed to religion 

One built on death

I picked up the stone

Put it in my pocket

In the dark it opened wings out from its back

It had had a vision of my future

When I was knocked down time seemed suspended. The car lights were frozen in my mind, but I was planted into the road, slammed flat. The image that eventually arrived is now seen by myself as a sensuous diagram, starting as a very rough drawing in a notebook, it began to morph as I began to daydream what it was like to be almost dead. It was as if I was part of a scene from a film, embedded into the scenery, but still allowed to play my part. I can see the scene now, a sensuous street, at night everything has an animist soul; the lights, the glistening road, wet from continuous rain, dark shops brooding, a stolid deep red post box, looking on, mouth open as if to say something, my shopping dispersed over the damp road, broken eggs leaking yokes in the rain, as I too dissolve into the flowing waters of the gutter. But I survived and I thanked by guardian angel.

It's now over a year since the accident, but I still see myself in that moment, as if I was outside my body, yet in it. Working with people who have had traumatic accidents has reminded me that I am making images for them to inhabit as much as myself, so images will need to be made like animist objects, so that they can be inhabited by other beings, put on like clothes or crawled into like a tent. 

Reading

Aaltonen, Minna-Ella (2011) Touch, taste & devour: phenomenology of
film and the film experiencer in the cinema of sensations. MPhil(R) thesis. Obtained at: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2666/01/2011aaltonenmphilr.pdf accessed on 14. 11. 11 

Farber, M (2006) The foundation of phenomenology: Edmund Husserl and the quest for a rigorous science of philosophy London: AldineTransaction

Furstenau, M (2010) The film theory reader London: Routledge

Harvey G. (2015) The Handbook of Contemporary Animism London: Routledge

Williford, K. (2013) 'Husserl’s hyletic data and phenomenal consciousness', Phenom Cogn Sci.
1​ DOI: 10.1007/s11097-013-9297-z.

See also:

I swear I saw this

The topology of dreams

Drawing on experience

Drawings as aesthetic transducers

Some thoughts on art and spirituality

The topology of dreams

Visual representation of “Awake state” vs “Dream state” according the Topographic-dynamic Reorganisation model of dreams

At the end of my post on the Borromean Knot I stated that the topology of dreams was perhaps the next thing to explore. There always seems to be a gap between what goes on in the mind and experience. Sometimes it seems as if we measure all experiences in relation to the experience of being in a particular body. Consciousness being a sort of embodied realisation of the process of becoming aware. But when I dream I'm somehow conscious of something but at the same time not conscious, because I'm asleep. It's interesting to see that Dali's work is still used to indicate dream states, his "paranoiac-critical" method, was a very conscious application of a visual methodology, designed to sit between readings, in order to destabilise a viewer's perception. It is the flitting between states that is perhaps what fascinates artists.

Areas of the brain

Northoff, Scalabrini and Fogel, (2023) when explaining why they have developed their current dream model theory, state that it is produced, "In order to bridge the gap between brain and experience". Their theory is a topographic-dynamic re-organisation model of dreams. They state that topographically, dreams are characterised by a shift towards increased activity and connectivity in the default-mode network, (DMN). If that gap can be bridged, it might help me to visualise or at least begin to model in my mind, some sort of diagram of the interrelationship between perception and consciousness. 

Raichle (2015) explains that 'the brain's default mode network consists of discrete, bilateral and symmetrical cortical areas, in the medial and lateral parietal, medial prefrontal and medial and lateral temporal cortices of the brain'. Interestingly, as well as this applying to humans, it applies to other primates, cats and rodent brains as well. 

The discovery of the default mode network reignited a longstanding interest in the significance of the brain's ongoing or intrinsic activity, i.e. a growing awareness that it is always active and doing something, even when it would appear that there is no need for it to be active because we are asleep or at rest. Resting-state studies, have indeed come to play a major role in researching the human brain in relation to health and disease. For instance, 'happiness' is very subjective. It has been suggested that unhappy people are prone to ruminate more and therefore Luo, Kong, Qi, You,& Huang. (2016) have posited that unhappiness may be associated with increased default-mode functional connectivity during rest.  The relative hyper-connectivity of the DMN areas may they argue, be associated with higher levels of rumination, which suggests that those of us who take time to rest, think too much when we do so. 

My recent experience working with people who have suffered traumatic spinal injuries, suggests that the less people are able to use their bodies, the more their mind operates to compensate for this. I have been holding conversations with people in a specialist spinal injuries ward, whereby we work together to visualise how they feel pain. The most active images have emerged from conversations with someone paralysed from the neck down. Perhaps some of the images that have emerged from these types of conversations might become starting points for diagrams of the interrelationship between perception and consciousness. 

Conversational image

But what of dreams, the images out of which so many of our inventions arise, all derived from a time when the body is supposed to be at rest?

From an anxiety dream: The visualisation of an inner feeling

Northoff, Scalabrini and Fogel, (2023), suggest that in dreams, there is a shift away from temporal segregation to temporal integration of brain inputs.  This they believe results in 'bizarre and highly self-centric mental contents, as well as hallucinatory-like states'. However, no matter how interesting this research is, it doesn't really deal with the mind and it would seem to me that it is the mind that is conscious, not the brain. 

I like to play table tennis and one of the reasons I do this is that I don't have to think too much about what I'm doing, I simply have to react. In fact if I try to think about what I'm going to do, I will miss my shot. This tells me that when incoming stimulus is focused and in need of a response, that somehow decisions are much simpler for the mind to make. Twenty seven plus thirty five, is a simple sum, and as I do it in my head, I focus on just that, I don't begin to speculate on other things. But when I sleepdream, or when I daydream, little external stimulus is coming in and therefore in order to keep active, my mind goes on to predict other possibilities, some of which are wonderful, some stupid and some frightening. Even when nothing is coming in via external senses, my mind seems to want to keep processing something; it keeps on trying to predict other possibilities. Perhaps this is why at times we need to be bored. If we look at Bayesian inference theory to explain this, we find that subjective probability lies at the core of how our fast response systems operate. Fight or flight mechanisms are driven by these things, so our body believes in their vital necessity and wants to make sure we are always on guard, even when we don't have to be. It would seem that because of this, what could be seen as a wasted energy process, is in fact one whereby wonderful things like dreams are made to happen. As a model, this closely resembles how most of us operate when we develop a working process for making artwork. Both are iterative processes; according to Bayesian inference theory you receive an initial stimulus, test it and then update your model of the world based on the new information; when making art you set down an initial idea, test it out and then update the idea based on what you have discovered. 

No matter how much better neurological visualisation techniques get, they do not seem to get us any closer to an idea of what consciousness is, or what a mind is. The mind is not the brain, it isn't even located in the brain, being it would seem distributed not just into the body as a whole, (the embodied mind) but out into the world itself, (the extended mind). In, 'You Are the Universe' Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos, go one step further and suggest that each of us is a co-creator of reality and that we live in a conscious universe. On the way to their current theory they dismiss animism as a way to think about this, but I still have a personal affection for an animist universe, as it allows me to inhabit and talk with and through non-human animate and inanimate things, if only in my imagination. 

Night thoughts: Climbing out of the subconscious

In the image above, ladders and tree roots are extensions of my body/mind; my hand and arm as they extend out from the edge of the frame, are images of my hand and arm as they extend into my field of vision. The rest of my arm is known to me by proprioception, the interoceptual sense that makes us aware of balance and our body parts. This is also true of anyone who looks at the image, their own sense of inhabiting a body, allows them to feel what it might be like to climb out of the space below the edge of the frame. This inner sense is also part and parcel of my sub-conscious, a state that exists inside my body, just as much as consciousness does. They are intertwined sensations. Memories of ladders and tree roots being another set of neurological energy flows that are woven into the arrival of an image such as the one above.  

Dreams are I believe central to my own imagination and I still keep a notebook at the bedside, so that when dreamt images emerge at night, I don't lose them; even if it means that when I wake I find I don't really understand what it was I was seeing during that night's dream state. It's the mystery that intrigues me, the fact that there is no answer, beyond a belief that there is something beyond the everyday and a feeling that underneath the surface of perception lies something deeper and profound. These are wonderful reasons to keep going, to keep looking for that unknown something that is just outside of my perceptual range. I am in making images looking for something I know is there, but I can never touch, something that I suppose is sometimes called reality. 

There is another theory about how consciousness is constructed, called orchestrated objective reduction theory (Orch OR). It was originally proposed by physicist Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff in the 1990s. It also, like art, seeks to bridge the gulf between physical matter and felt experience. The idea is that consciousness arises when gravitational instabilities in the fundamental structure of space-time collapse quantum wave functions in tiny proteins called microtubules, which are found inside neurons. Rather than being a product of neural connections, Orch OR posits that consciousness is based on non-computable quantum processing performed by qubits (like binary bits, qubits are the basic units of information in quantum computing), formed collectively in cellular microtubules, a process significantly amplified through the neurons themselves. The qubits are based on oscillating dipoles forming superposed resonance rings in helical pathways throughout lattices of microtubules. The oscillations are either electric, due to charge separation from London forces, or magnetic, due to electron spin. Consciousness therefore arising from quantum computations which are connected to the fine-scale structure of spacetime geometry. If this idea has traction, it might explain how 'spooky action at a distance' works to build some sort of cosmic consciousness, or at least free the mind from its prison within our skulls. The idea has reached the point whereby diagrams can be drawn to illustrate how it works, which for myself means that it has more visual momentum.

A: An axon terminal releases neurotransmitters through a synapse and they are received by microtubules in a neuron's dendritic spine
B: Simulated microtubule tubulins switch states.

David Bohm was very interested in these issues and he proposed a solution by looking at what he called 'implicate' and 'explicate' order, which he thought of as ontological bases for quantum theory, and are used to describe two different frameworks for understanding the same phenomenon or aspect of reality. In particular, the concepts were developed in order to explain the bizarre behaviours of subatomic particles, which quantum physics describes and predicts but struggles to explain. In 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order' he described how differing contexts might change the appearance of certain phenomena. The "implicate" (also referred to as the "enfolded") order, is a deep fundamental order of reality. The "explicate" or "unfolded" order includes the abstractions that humans normally perceive. He stated in relation to this, "In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements." (Bohm, 1980) 

As space and time become questioned as to their role in our perceptual understanding of the world, a door is opened into a universe within which the spaces and times of dreaming can be enfolded, their topology perhaps more like that of the tessellations and associated optical illusions that Roger Penrose introduced to Escher, which had a direct effect on his making of the print, 'Ascending and Descending'.

Escher: 'Ascending and Descending'

References

Bohm, D. (1980/2002) Wholeness and the Implicate Order London: Routledge

Chopra, D. and Kafatos, M.C., (2018) You are the universe: Discovering your cosmic self and why it matters. London: Harmony.

Davey, C. G., Pujol, J., & Harrison, B. J. (2016). Mapping the self in the brain's default mode network. NeuroImage, 132, 390–397. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.02.022

Northoff, G., Scalabrini, A., Fogel, S. (2023) Topographic-dynamic reorganisation model of dreams – A spatiotemporal approach, Neuroscience & Biobehavioural Reviews, Volume 148,

Lau, H.C., (2007) A higher order Bayesian decision theory of consciousness. Progress in brain research, 168, pp.35-48.

Luo, Y., Kong, F., Qi, S., You, X., & Huang, X. (2016). Resting-state functional connectivity of the default mode network associated with happiness. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 11(3), 516–524. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv132

Raichle M. E. (2015). The brain's default mode network. Annual review of neuroscience, 38, 433–447. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-014030

See also: 

The Borromean Knot

Paper and skin

Knots

Benjamin Brett and Geometrical Psychology 

Drawing and quantum theory part one

Drawing and quantum theory part two

Quantum entanglement

The geometry of consciousness

Erasers, rubbers and scrapers

Using a razor blade to erase parts of an ink drawing on Bristol Board

I have devoted several posts to various drawing mediums and suggested that their medium specificity was something you need to explore if you need to think about the full range of expression available to you. However except for a brief mention of erasers in my post on the pencil , I haven't given much time or thought to the importance of erasure techniques. So perhaps its now time to address this.

Erasure is of course also a conceptual idea and just as there are a variety of technical ways to remove the marks made to construct a drawing, there are just as many theoretical implications as to why we might erase and what the activity itself might mean. In my post on The Magic Slate I highlighted the importance of Freud's essay A Note Upon the Mystic Writing Pad and explained that he reasoned that especially traumatic conscious thought could vanish into the unconscious, but that it would always survive in the mind in a similar way to the faint impressions inscribed in the wax. I. e. that erasure usually leaves signs of how it has been done and that as a drawing medium in its own right, it can also act as a metaphor for how we think.

As Freud pointed out, the act of erasure can be related to how our subconscious operates, therefore as I go through the various ways that you might technically erase something, don't forget that as you apply a new process of removal, you are also creating a new story or narrative of removal. Perhaps these narratives can be seen as ghost stories, I'm always more frightened by a trace of what might have been than by most direct confrontations with reality.

Trace of a human erased by an atomic bomb blast

In Hong Kong cleaners are employed to hastily remove graffiti by painting over it with bleach, washing it off with a high-pressure water gun, or by taping over the graffiti with sheets of black or white plastic. They are not skilled enough however, and they still leave traces of what was written, therefore they in effect highlight the attitude of the Chinese government to what the people of Hong Kong are saying, rather than erase what they were saying from history.

Typical drawing erasers are made of synthetic rubber, nylon, or other man-made materials, but before these carbon heavy and not very sustainable petrochemical manufactured erasers were invented, stale bread was often used for removing chalk marks from paper.

Rubber was called 'rubber' by the English chemist Joseph Priestley because of its effectiveness in “rubbing out” marks on paper, and it soon supplanted bread as a correction tool. However bread can still be used.

Bread prepared for use as an eraser

Partial erasure of graphite with bread

As a remover of dry art materials from paper surfaces bread isn't great, (see this pdf for a full analysis) but if you know this, bread can still be used to 'ghost out' sections of a graphite drawing. This ability, coupled with an understanding that stale bread was used, perhaps even retaining the breadcrumbs in some way, could well become central to an image's meaning. For instance Anthony Gormley in his 'Bread Works', such as 'Bed' 1980, involved a programme of erasure by eating, during which he ate his own volume in bread.

Anthony Gormley: Bed

Rubber erasers are soft and gentle on paper, and are often found on the top of pencils. They are typically pink in colour and are usually found in wedge shapes. The Faber pink pearl is probably the most well known of this variety and during manufacture it has pumice added into its rubber mix, thus giving it more abrasive power, whilst keeping the soft pliable nature of the rubber. The example below is of a double ended rubber or of course eraser if you are from the States. Notice it is latex free, a sign of the times, therefore made from synthetic rubber. The softer pencil erasing end is still pink and the harder ink eraser blue.

The Faber Castell ink and pencil eraser

I find this type of eraser OK but on charcoal not as effective as a kneaded one for ease of control. However kneaded erasers will not remove everything, so you need to get back to a pure white, use something harder, like the Pink Pearl. The Pink Pearl has pumice added into the rubber to ensure a better bite, which means that it is on the way to being an ink eraser. Sand ink erasers are often made out of rubber mixed with sand or silica, and these erasers are the toughest.

A sand eraser

Through the application of charcoal and chalk, and the extensive work to remove them, Auerbach creates an ebb and flow of creation, damage and repair, a cycle that reflects our everyday experience of being worn away by life's reality.

Frank Auerbach

The erasures in Auerbach'a drawings are as much about the creation of space, as the modelling of form, as much about the re-creation of a sitter's energy, as the establishing of planar direction. Touches of colour remind me of William Kentridge, another artist who has spent a lot of time erasing charcoal surfaces, but with a different intent. Kentridge uses erasure to establish and make a series of decisions, that could easily, as they sometimes do, become an animated series of consequences, whilst Auerbach is engaged with a philosophy of looking as opposed to a narrative about looking.

William Kentridge

For Auerbach to remove so much charcoal, I suspect he used a tough rubber eraser, whilst Kentridge may well have used a gum or kneaded eraser, because they can be stretched, compressed, split, and moulded for more precision erasing, pruning lines, cleaning edges, creating highlights through subtractive drawing, or performing other detailed work. They can completely remove light marks, but are ill-suited to fully erasing dark areas; notice the lack of deep tonal contrast in Kentridge's drawing. In fact, I suspect he often just used his fingers to wipe away charcoal, so that the ghost of the previous drawing activity is very clear. The other reason you might use a gum eraser, is that it leaves far less detritus on the drawing surface. A rubber eraser breaks down as it pulls the graphite, chalk or charcoal off the paper, so you get lots of crumbly bits on the surface, which you have to keep removing.

Notice this kneaded eraser is in various languages also a malleable gum eraser 

A gum or kneaded eraser can be stretched without breaking up

A gum eraser typically comes with a clear plastic cover

A putty eraser that crumbles if you try and pull it apart

These kneaded erasers or gum erasers are also sometimes called putty rubbers, often the same but not always. Try and tear one in half, if it tears more like bread, it wont stick back together again, so is not a kneaded eraser/gum eraser and will break up as you use it. The other aspect of a kneaded/gum/putty rubber is that instead of rubbing to remove a layer of charcoal or graphite or chalk, you can press the eraser down and then lift it up to remove a thin layer. Done subtly this can be used to make very delicate refinements. To clean these erasers you can simply stretch a clean part over the used dirty part, hiding the layer of removed dust inside your ever changing flexible ball of kneadable gum/putty.

Gum Eraser

The other eraser that gets confused with the kneaded eraser is what is sometimes called the “art gum” eraser. A gum eraser has a soft, gummy texture and can have a slightly translucent-looking appearance. They absorb graphite and crumble as they erase. The eraser itself is a little bit softer than a typical rubber eraser, so it is better suited to use on some soft, easily broken up paper surfaces. The thing to think about is that the kneadable eraser is malleable like chewing gum, while a gum eraser looks like a solid block of gum Arabic. 

Vinyl Erasers

Vinyl erasers are the hardest ones and can even erase ink marks. They feel smoother when erasing as they do not catch the paper so much as you work the eraser backwards and forwards. I often use Steadtler Mars Plastic erasers to remove underlying pencil drawings from images that have had watercolour built up over initial pencil marks. Their plastic 'crumbs' are finer than the ones that come off rubber erasers, so again you have less mess. However you do need to keep cleaning them by rubbing them over a clear paper surface, if not they can begin to smear dark marks back onto your drawing.  

My old friend Richard Baker used to use an electric eraser to refine his pencil drawings and found it a very powerful tool. It has a small tip, so it lends itself to detailed work. 

Richard Baker: Collection only; Graphite

Electric erasers

Electric erasers usually come with both 5mm and 2.5mm tips and these tips can be sharpened further with a piece of sandpaper if you need a really precise erasure.

Glass erasers were originally designed to remove ink from transparent papers, and they are actually made of' 'fibreglass'

Glass eraser

As well as for ink removal, they are often used for tarnish removal of battery terminals and getting rid of corroded solder when re-soldering. You can draw with them in a similar way to the use of an electric rubber, especially if you want fine white lines within a grey graphite texture. As rubbers they are good for working on a wide range of hard surfaces. 

Eraser shields. If you are looking for precision then you might look at using eraser shields. These are thin sheets, usually made of metal or plastic and designed with different shaped spaces. An erasing shield is a mask used to control the effects of an eraser, like a reverse stencil, instead of adding a new surface through a cut stencil, you remove one. The tool is made of a thin, flexible material such as transparent plastic, or stainless steel shim stock for durability and it is used for very precise work, so usually you will see them in an engineering drawing office. But like all tools they can be used by an artist in any way you want, for instance to create precise gaps within an image. This video shows how they are normally used.

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Using an eraser shield
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• Blackboard chalk can be erased using a blackboard eraser.
  
  

  

Blackboard erasers are made of laminated felt pads made mostly of nylon threads. They make a very distinctive erasure surface and are often used not just to erase an image or writing but as a symbol for an idea being erased. But remember a wet rag is sometimes better, again it is the quality of the mark on erasure that is important as well as the association you want to make with it. 

The textures of blackboard erasure.

Poster for a Cy Twombly exhibition using the idea of the blackboard and its erasure

The origin of the word erasure is radere, to scrape and scrapers and scraping are also important erasure processes and tools. 

Scraping into oil pastel 

Artists often draw with scrapers, and this is sometimes done by laying one colour down first and then going over it with black. On the other hand if you are working in ink on Bristol Board or a similar tough surface, a razor blade is an effective way of removing any dry ink you don't want before proceeding to re-ink the surface. (See image at the top of this post)

To scrape away an image can make it feel as if you are conducting some sort of speeded up erosion of a surface, but by cutting into the surface by changing the angle of the blade, suddenly it begins to feel as if you are plowing it up and then a little more angle and push and then you are digging into the surface. All these approaches can be further facilitated by laying gesso grounds of various thickness onto your papers before beginning to draw. See link below on drawing grounds.

Each form of erasure will come with its own associations and metaphorical possibilities, the issue being that the removal of your marks is as important as their initial application and it is one of the main ways that artists embed time into their images, because you can read each faintly visible erased mark, as a frozen moment of the past. 

Lucienne Rickard: extinction studies

Extinction studies is a series of drawings made by the artist Lucienne Rickard, whereby she erases each image of a species as soon as she has constructed it. The ghosts of previous drawings build up behind the image she is presently making, all reminders that the actual animals she is depicting are also gradually being erased from existence. 

Roy Eastland: Silverpoint on gesso

Roy Eastland often deals with fading memories and he will sometimes sand away his silverpoint drawing in order to emphasise the delicate nature of memory; his images emerging out of their gesso surface as if they are coming out of a morning mist. The drawing above is of an old toy, it dissolves back into our collective memories, just as easily as it emerges from them, Eastland is one of the few people who I think can work effectively from photographic imagery, his approach transcending the idea of copying and replacing it with a material memory, one that is able to embed the frailty of humanity into a reflection upon a mechanical process, at the heart of which is something to do with mark making and erasure. 

See also:

Drawing grounds
Asemic writing More thoughts on Hong Kong graffiti erasure
The pencil and sustainability
Pencils and erasers
Silverpoint drawing