Overlapping areas of drawing research
I have been using drawing as research for some time and the process has gradually moved from using drawing as a research method, whereby I gather information and test out its implications in terms of what it can communicate, to using drawing as a more comprehensive research methodology.
Drawing has become integrated into the conceptual framework of my research and if I look back on this journey, it is the writing I undertook for the book 'Collective and Collaborative drawing in Contemporary Practice' for Cambridge Scholars publishing, that allowed me to think through how I used drawing both as a research method and as a research methodology.
In the chapter I wrote for Cambridge Scholars, 'Drawing as a tool for shaping community experience into collective allegory', I set out to show how five related but separate drawing methodologies could be examined with regard to their capacity to foster different types of visual understanding. Traditional objective drawing was looked at in relation to its ability to not only document what was seen but as a method of conversational engagement, as well as a way of getting people to look again at what was very familiar to them. Drawing as imaginative play and image generation, was explored in relation to how visual narratives could be told and personal ideas expressed. Architectural illustration and associated technical drawing skills were examined for their potential uses as envisioning tools and as instruments for the communication of concrete realities. Map making was opened out as a tool for enabling effective community ownership of both real and imagined events, and as a way of ensuring location and orientation were embedded into an understanding of environment and place. Finally I looked at how all these various approaches could be brought together within large scale narrative drawings, that were designed around bent perspectives. I have since then been thinking much more about the role of the diagram as a way to shape our thinking, and how perceptual recording of visual experiences can demonstrate a more phenomenological understanding of our place in the world. The more approaches to drawing taken, the more I believe an intuited and nuanced understanding of the various subject matters carried by drawing can be developed. For instance my interest in how drawing can be used to visualise interoceptual experiences, can be linked to both a formal understanding of how a drawing communicates and the concept of embodied energy flows, as well as how non European understandings of embodied health can be integrated into developing drawing as a way to foster wellbeing.
The initial focus is for myself always on the visual (the drawing), however, these blog posts in particular have also allowed me to consider the broader implications and contexts of my drawing processes.
The map was later used as an idea embedded into a table type object that had a variety of purposes including being a space on which I would put an old fish tank that would be used as a container for electroplating the objects that would be moved around on its surface. (Only by following the link at the bottom of this post will this make sense.)
You can see that as a researcher I do have a problem. Research is supposed to begin with a clear understanding of how the methodology will be used, I should be able to draw on relevant theories related to visual methods and show how they will aid myself and others in a deeper understanding of my specific research topic. I tend instead to find that the drawings emerge from a muddle of doing and thinking and material conversations, only beginning to frame themselves up as coherent constructs, about halfway through their gestation. The table/map/game above was not thought through beforehand, it just emerged and only later could I see that it brought together several different strands of my thinking and once about in the studio, it then becomes another thing that can suggest itself as a component within something else, in the case of the table type object, this idea wasn't even being thought about at the time the initial map drawing was being made.
I'm now working making drawings with patients that I meet and talk to in a local hospital. I'm aware that at some point there will be a need to analyse not just the visual content of the drawings made, but also a need to reflect on the processes of creation, the contributions made by participants and the potential meanings embedded within the artworks made and how these are understood by the participants. Although I shall attempt to draw these things out and present them as a type of data, I am very aware that part of the process of my image gestation relies on an approach that encourages serendipity as an essential tool.
For example: could I consider how my drawings could be used as a way to explore social representations, considering how participants might use the drawings made to express their perspectives and how these representations might be used to communicate with others. However, it is sometimes hard to summon up the energy to do this, especially as I am actually doing these things with real people; to then add another layer which is to document it all happening and to reflect on it, requires another burst of energy that I'm not sure I have.
My research methodology should hopefully embrace all these different things and allow for a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the visualisation of interoception and how others use it to understand the world. It should also have a specific theoretical perspective, a lens through which to understand the stuff I'm doing, something to guide my research and provide a framework for interpretation. However, my mind is like a butterfly, flitting and dancing all over the place, one minute I'm acting like a shaman and the next like a neurologist. Hopefully my approach can reveal insights that might not be accessible through traditional research methodologies, but I might have to give up trying to think that I can validate the trustworthiness of my findings, by using the approach that I take. I am in reality looking at a form of poetry as research, an approach that has to accept a lack of scientific validation. The muddle of entanglements that my work emerges out of, is I feel a more realistic situation than the supposedly 'objective' frameworks that are used within 'normal' research, art not being science, but it can be part of a communication process that leads to participants greater self awareness and a heightened feeling of wellbeing.
Recording a story
Recomposing some of the fragments in watercolour
Drawing is so rich in its approaches to carrying ideas that I often find that I'm sliding together or overlapping various methodological layers. For instance the use of the insert.
Richard McGuire: 'Here'
Richard McGuire inserts frames within frames, stretching the conventions of the graphic novel, in order to develop a rich layering of time. This convention can though also be used to suggest another possibility, or to show a detail, as it enables an image to contain further information that stands alone and yet is always also related to the main concept.
Cosmic tableware
For instance when I was developing ideas for tablecloths and tableware, such as the image above of a ceramic moon cheese dish and accompanying bowls, with black hole and stars tablecloth, I could put several aspects of the idea together in one image, in such a way that it also referenced the Grattan catalogues out of which my mother used to use to sell stuff to the neighbourhood, back in the 1960s. I began by putting these different items into frames, but then dropped them. They are in fact invisible, but still there. This all seems pretty obvious, but it was only when I put my thoughts together in this way that people 'got it' and I could then see if they wanted to proceed with supporting the idea.
A map carries very different information. But it doesn't always have to be like an ordinance survey map.
Map of Chapeltown: Pen and Ink on Fabriano roll.
This map of my locality, Chapeltown, was drawn by myself in order to communicate issues about how the streets are used as well as to show how large open spaces are adjacent to the densely populated streets. Bent perspectives also allowed me to bring into focus certain psychologically important moments, thus helping the viewer become engaged in different levels of attention.
Idea for furniture/game
You can see that as a researcher I do have a problem. Research is supposed to begin with a clear understanding of how the methodology will be used, I should be able to draw on relevant theories related to visual methods and show how they will aid myself and others in a deeper understanding of my specific research topic. I tend instead to find that the drawings emerge from a muddle of doing and thinking and material conversations, only beginning to frame themselves up as coherent constructs, about halfway through their gestation. The table/map/game above was not thought through beforehand, it just emerged and only later could I see that it brought together several different strands of my thinking and once about in the studio, it then becomes another thing that can suggest itself as a component within something else, in the case of the table type object, this idea wasn't even being thought about at the time the initial map drawing was being made.
I'm now working making drawings with patients that I meet and talk to in a local hospital. I'm aware that at some point there will be a need to analyse not just the visual content of the drawings made, but also a need to reflect on the processes of creation, the contributions made by participants and the potential meanings embedded within the artworks made and how these are understood by the participants. Although I shall attempt to draw these things out and present them as a type of data, I am very aware that part of the process of my image gestation relies on an approach that encourages serendipity as an essential tool.
Another aspect of research methodology is interpretation. I should consider the drawings within the larger context of the research, perhaps drawing on participant reflections on the process, as a way to begin an engagement with a more objective awareness of the relationship between the languages of drawing and how artwork is embedded within wider social practices. I might highlight the sub-group pre-occupation of being an artist and the related vocabulary I use to describe my work to others, and how this may manifest itself in an unequal power relationship with participants. This could enable me to highlight the way that discourse (all the languages in use, visual, written and verbal) shapes an understanding of the situation, influences social relations but hopefully also contributes to change, all of which could be part of a critical discourse analysis of this drawing led project.
For example: could I consider how my drawings could be used as a way to explore social representations, considering how participants might use the drawings made to express their perspectives and how these representations might be used to communicate with others. However, it is sometimes hard to summon up the energy to do this, especially as I am actually doing these things with real people; to then add another layer which is to document it all happening and to reflect on it, requires another burst of energy that I'm not sure I have.
My research methodology should hopefully embrace all these different things and allow for a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the visualisation of interoception and how others use it to understand the world. It should also have a specific theoretical perspective, a lens through which to understand the stuff I'm doing, something to guide my research and provide a framework for interpretation. However, my mind is like a butterfly, flitting and dancing all over the place, one minute I'm acting like a shaman and the next like a neurologist. Hopefully my approach can reveal insights that might not be accessible through traditional research methodologies, but I might have to give up trying to think that I can validate the trustworthiness of my findings, by using the approach that I take. I am in reality looking at a form of poetry as research, an approach that has to accept a lack of scientific validation. The muddle of entanglements that my work emerges out of, is I feel a more realistic situation than the supposedly 'objective' frameworks that are used within 'normal' research, art not being science, but it can be part of a communication process that leads to participants greater self awareness and a heightened feeling of wellbeing.
My current work also uses related but separate drawing methodologies, each one fostering a different type of visual understanding. Traditional objective drawing is used to communicate certain aspects of the situation that people may find themselves in. Rough sketches can be made alongside written notes in a notebook and a more technical drawing produced using Illustrator software much later.
Wheelchair rough sketch
Wheelchair drawn in Illustrator
For instance I may draw someone's wheelchair, or the bed they are in, their crutches or the way they sit or stand. Sometimes this is used to establish a narrative framework out of which other stories may emerge. In one case the drawing of a wheelchair was gradually faded out in subsequent drawings because the participant did not want to be defined as a wheelchair user. Figurative drawing has an ability to not only document what was seen but it can also act as a method of conversational engagement.
A notebook drawing made as a reminder that someone could only move one arm
Drawing as imaginative play and image generation, is used to find visual languages to express what is not visible. For instance the level and type of pain someone is experiencing, or the emotional feelings that accompany an awareness of the situation someone finds themselves in.
From a series of drawings trying to define how someone feels about their pain
Illustration as a drawing method is used to develop images that represent important symbolic issues for participants, for instance someone who used to be a very fit runner, wanted to show how that aspect of their lives still resonated with their current view of themselves and the image of an 'inner runner' was drawn as they mentioned it. The initial sketch made during a conversation was then used as a stimulus for the later image that was drawn using watercolour washes alongside pen and ink drawing and then scanned into Photoshop and finalised as a digital print.
Initial note of a past running history
Looking for the inner runner: Worked up drawing, composed within Photoshop
Fragments of conversational story can be collected together as visual notes, then used later to stimulate the construction of a more powerful image.
Architectural illustration and associated technical drawing skills have been used as wider envisioning tools, to enable the communication of for instance how the resultant images could be embedded into an architectural setting, or put together as an exhibition. Body mapping has ensured that location and orientation of pain is clearly expressed as to its location within the body.
Locating pain in relation to sitting in a wheelchair for a long time
Diagrams have been used to gain an idea of how the issues being unearthed are effecting wider narratives and charts, graphs and scales are used for representing certain aspects of pain visually, when having conversations with patients.
The interoceptual body embedded into the world
All these various approaches can be brought together within large scale narrative drawings, or drawings for animation, and in particular I have become more and more aware of how drawing can demonstrate a phenomenological understanding of experience. The materiality of some drawings often giving a first clue as to how the image will need to be developed, something that can only work if the possibilities are 'listened to' and intuitively grasped, a process that is often more of a muddle than a research tool.
A pain chart, designed to help visualisation
The pain chart above is drawing in its most data holding form and like the overlapping areas of drawing research diagram that opens this post, is a constantly being updated thing. Each and everyone of these approaches, can become a research methodology, but when first used the approach may simply be a method. The slipping and sliding between methods and methodologies is a sort of research game that should I know be taken seriously, but as a maker I also see that all drawings start with a method and gradually as you become more and more involved with what that method can do, it becomes a methodology, but perhaps more intuitive than rational.
Animation landscape in development
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