Around 1997 I invented myself a different kind of drawing technic. I wanted to find a new way to draw directly from reality. Photography is a great at getting a huge amount of details with not much effort. Just one click. It has however a kind of objectivity that sometimes tend to be a bit dull.
And I love the process of playing with pencils and colours. Splashing around and see what happens. Copying reality is a great excuse to get into pure painting and drawing without that little voice in your head asking what the hell are you drawing now.
How to avoid spending too much time thinking about whether I got the details of some reality in the right way on my canvas. I made drawings on a transparent canvas, fixed on a frame on a tripod. I looked through the transparent surface and just drew what I saw with a black pen. We all did this as a kid, right. Copying images by drawing over them.
What I liked about this kind of drawing was the fact that I absolutely had no support to draw steady lines. That was the case because I was just standing and not sitting comfortably. Also, you will be amazed how much your body is moving while you try to stand still.
The result was a kind of drawing that on the one hand ‘perfectly’ reflected what I saw through the transparent canvas and on the other hand also reflected my own unbalanced, unsteady viewpoint.
I made quite a few of these kind of drawings and some of them where afterwards enriched with color. I used acrylic paint, if I remember well.
I also painted them backwards. The drawing is done first but the layers of colors were painted on the other side of the transparent canvas.
This series of ten were made somewhere around 1997. They give a pretty good idea of the studio we had in these days. It’s magical how a little stroke of paint still can represent in a pretty accurate way the objects that were lying around. For myself, Petra and all the other people who happened to be around of course. What complete strangers make of them, I would not know. I hope at least they see some interesting drawing and painting…
