Bring in the fog

Aerial perspectives are a challenge. This detail is from full sheet size, 22" x 30", for a project that's likely to raise a lot of hackles. For conceptual illustrations where there is no architectural info available, the context-obliterating clouds of of Chinese and Japanese landscape style, sansui-ga, from the 15th c. is appealing. Only salient scenes would have to be drawn, with mist intervening where no design info is available. In the 21st c, I have to invent built forms, continuous to the property line, where none may ever be built. The result of can be beautiful and give its viewer a sense of soaring. That's great for fund-raising and approving boards of directors who may operate from a detached position. When no end-user will ever soar, is it disingenuous to sell an idea this way? Does it bridge or exacerbate the gap between end-user and promoter?

tangled up in conté

There are just five drawings in that front room at 95 3rd Street, SF. Two have blue sky, but all are charcoal, and just a bit of other color. Like Gretel leaving breadcrumbs to find her way home, a spot of rust crayon left here and there helps me find a recently-drawn branch after looking at the real tangle. I like that intense looking -- in small doses! Perspective construction -- the nerdy sister of drawing from source -- requires a similar tracking: putting families of lines in distinct colors, to locate them within the tangle of a scene. Drawing without a visual model sometimes feels like all geometry and no sensation. Charcoal makes a dusty, strokey noise, and drawing outdoors magnifies the in-the-world-ness of the process. It can't help but leave traces of where I got lost or changed my mind. Can someone who wasn't there sense the process of that quiet tracking of spatial relations by looking at the drawing? If you get a chance to see the drawings let me know.

early inspiration

Vince Collins on perspective.