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The reason I want to do these sculptures is to understand how I can better add dimensional shapes into my paintings. So once I finished the clay sculpture I wanted to draw it, to see how it would translate back onto paper – how easily could I translate the clay back into simple lines? This process would give me clues for how to make my next sculpture better.

I began with this pencil drawing, drawing the sculpture looking down on it as delicately and accurately as possible. I wanted to do a drawing like this because that would mean I had translated the drawing onto paper.
I am really happy with the rendering of this drawing, it is rare that I draw so finely and delicately! But it forced me to scrutinise the sculpture and translate it to a 2D image, which helped with the second drawing.

My original plan was to just do a simple pencil sketch on plain paper, like the last drawing. But after starting the sketch on plain paper, I realised the simplified structure is intended to be applied in thin white lights on a darker background, so it made sense to do this drawing in a simple version of that.
So I applied ink to the background. Then I used thin newspaper paper to trace around the detailed drawing and then relay those dimensions onto this new drawing. I did this because I wanted the two drawings to have the same size and dimensions, I wanted them to be as accurate as possible to the sculpture as well. Since I spent so much time carefully plotting the dimensions in the first drawing it made sense to transfer that shape across to the second drawing.
Once I plotted shapes in pencil I went over in white acrylic with a really fine brush.
The aim of this drawing was the shapes to be reduced to lines that represented the structural qualities of the drawing, and any important features that were part of that. I straightened the lines out slightly as well, and generally cleaned the sculpture up.

I wanted to see what this reduced shape would look like on an actual painting. I went outside and painted the colours looking directly up at an opening in a canopy of trees, intending to place the drawing in the centre. I made sure to layer the brushstrokes under and over the drawing as I have done in the past.

The outcome is okay. The simplfied shape does a good job at describing a canopy that is converging in the centre and reaching up. But the problem is the white lines look so flat, even with the layering of the brushes under and over. Perhaps it is the angle I am drawing it from?

Overall

I am happy with the process of drawing the shape, then refining the drawing, then applying it to the canvas. It is helping me to improve my sculpture but at the moment it is not producing successful paintings. Where is the great space, height and depth!?

Some sculptures that resemble the shapes in Kunz’s drawings, and appear to me as three-dimensional manifestations of her drawings.
What’s interesting to me is that looking up at a (linear) sculpture creates such symmetry and shapes that could easily be flattened into a drawing. But when you stand back from the shape and look at the same sculpture from the side, the shape of the sculpture is revealed and the impression of the lines as marks on a page are replaced with the build of the structure.
For example, the sculpture in the top right could be a flat drawing on blue paper, but if you stepped out from underneath, the height and build of the shape would be revealed.

The same experience can be said for cathedral architecture. When one stands directly underneath the architecture, it resembles a flat drawing, with symmetrical, cyclical shapes. But when you move, the build of the shapes are revealed, the dome shape and the support columns are revealed too.

The same thing can’t be said for woodlands? At least there is no geometry or symmetry when you look directly up at a treetop canopy. But I think it is the same when you move around in the space, the height and shapes are revealed.

So now I know I want my sculpture to have this quality:
– to be symmetrical when looking directly up at it
– to have ‘legs’/columns that define the height of the structure and create an inside space that is a mini version of the experience of these great woodland canopies and cathedrals interiors.

Kunz was a Swiss healer, researcher and artist. I saw her work for the first time at the Serpentine Gallery over Easter in the exhibition Emma Kunz – Visionary Drawings: An exhibition conceived with Christodoulos Panayiotou. I read about her work as we entered the exhibition and was immediately interested, and surprised, because I had not expected the drawings to be concerned with such issues! Here’s a quote from the exhibition description:

[Kunz’s] gift was an awareness of connections that contradicted both normal experience and scientific interpretations of the laws of Nature and art. This was a supernatural event, a miracle that, in revealing divine truths conveyed a secret impulse on a par with that of cosmic creation. Emma Kunz’s drawings are attempts to find a universal connection. They are the records of her concentration on the question of the Whole.

https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/emma-kunz-visionary-drawings-exhibition-conceived-christodoulos-panayiotou

The idea that such simple tools – coloured pencils, a ruler, graph paper and sometimes a pendulum, can produce art about monumental issues is bold. Ideas of science, nature and spirituality aren’t the things I thought of when I saw the drawings. The exhibition didn’t have descriptions or names next to each work so there was no chance for impressions to be skewed by titles or descriptions. There was a free digital guide yey that had some information on individual pieces, but having the material paintings unaccompanied was great! It forced me to look at the drawing and the drawing only, with no distractions.

I took photos of my favourite drawings:

I really found my own meaning in these works. The ideas of spirituality and the whole universe etc didn’t come across to me, but I found the paintings interesting nonetheless. I do think the drawings have a mediative quality to them, the repetitive lines and simplicity made me think Kunz did these drawings as a form of moving meditation?
As well as this, I was immediately reminded of the structures in my paintings when I saw the drawings in person. These drawings felt to me like a colourful, more complex version of the structures I have been drawing. I imagined the Kunz’s drawings being the roof of structures, where I would stand directly underneath and looking up at the ceiling which was one of Kunz’s drawings.

I spent the time imagining how the lines and angles of the drawings could create 3D shapes, where points in the centre of the drawing point towards the sky or vie versa. I thought of this because all the drawings have lines that converge in one or multiple focus points. This to me appeared like peaks or troughs of a roof shape if looked at from another angle. This is a rough digital sketch of the kind of shapes I mean:

Seeing these drawings made me think about how I could push the structure shapes forward, using lines, and converging points for structures that are more complex than I have made before.