Studio Glossary
TheDrawingStudio Glossary is an ongoing record of terms that surround drawing. It aims to find thought-provoking and insightful new and old ways of envisioning the words we often use in the face of drawing and how those words might spark new drawing in turn. Bi-annual glossary events are hosted at the studio to make the glossary ever richer. For now, you'll find Olivia's intuitive definitions below.
Our next meeting with be held May 16 2025
A
abstraction
art that does not try to mimic a camera's view...actually maybe it has nothing to do with what looks representational or not, maybe its just art that uses personal symbology
allover composition
"The last refuge of the scoundrel"-David Reed (as I remember him saying)
animating touch
The act of putting life in a mark
aphantasia
As a student explained it, not being able to draw from their minds eye.....Now, how to define "minds eye"....
asemic writing
writing without language
asymmetry
mobility with the most stability
attention
a willingness to be absorbed in what is at hand, comes in different rythms intensities and paces, might be related to state of mind or consciousness or concentration and might be good to parse in order to self-know a practice
B
beaux-arts
eeek! how deep inside it am I and can I get out with all that is useful from it?
before
what is in front of your body, that you eyes can see.
what happened until now.
C
calligraphic
"is a composition of drawing and writing: like writing its done with a brush and ink on a blank background; like drawing, its a visual language based on shape, gesture and tonality; and, like drawing, it's usually done on a blank surface, and negative space that is taken into consideration, and its overall composition." Amy Sillmans
centrifugal
moving inward?
centripetal
moving out?
contour line
isolating edges
cross contour
hard to explain, almost surface and edge at once....multiple contours to delinieate a surface and its volume
D
diagram
drawing aiming to communicate more than express
dimension-busting
finding more dimension
doodling
a kind of free style drawing
drawing
"A drawing is an ideal means of coming nearer to the whole, to the fullness of what humankind means, and what social order means.… My thinking on drawings as a special form of materialized thought is this: they are the beginning of changing the material condition of the world"
-Joseph Beuys
drawn score
a drawing that correlates with a series of moves
E
edge of light/dark
the contour where light meets dark and dark meets light
experimental Drawing
Working on this...Abstract drawing? Drawing that is not done from direct observation? But perception? Conceptual drawing? Oooof! What is observational drawing anyway, a Beaux Arts organization of how to teach art? How much of that do we want to use?
F
H
handwriting
a kind of drawing
horizon
In western art the sky and the Earth appear as two levels. The one above the other conventionally, defined and identified by a number of accessories for sky, for instance, clouds... in contrast in Chinese arts, sky and earth constitute to antithetical terms that through their very opposition combine to produce the landscape provided that the painter has been able with his brushstroke to seize his upon the rhythm in which they interact.
Before beginning to paint far from defining the space of the representation in advance, as a finite area, he "reserved" the place for the sky and the Earth, and only then in the middle, left empty, decides upon the landscape, which is seen as a resolution of the contradiction of sky earth, and at the same time as a way of passing beyond it....
quotes from Hubert Damisch's Theory of Clouds
I
ideate
to attempt to manifest whats in your head using a drawing instrument
illustrate
"to light up, to make things clear and visible"
thanks to Aletta Ren
inanimate
something waiting to be brought into being
inner eye
seeing with intuition?
intention
what we are driven to do beyond intuition
intuition
what we are driven to do beyond intention
IRL
in real life
K
kneaded eraser
good for picking up particles on medium from a page in varying degrees; good for anxiety and kinesthetic drawers
L
life drawing
good question... drawing from anything animate? how about figure drawing, from any figure?
linear perspective
a network of lines that can create an effect of depth that implies the negation of the plane onto which its projected.
extension, homogenous continuous and infinite, and at once centered and fixed....beginning of the end? very cool?
some words here are pinched from Hubert Damisch's Orgin of Perspective
A cultural technique that "is the basic act of conquering the world, now turned into a picture, by means of projective graphic operations that turn the subject inot a stage of respresentation...the eye is the active principle of design that connects the artists workshop with the navigator's globe" Bernard Siegerts Cultural Techniques
line quality
whats a line is like
the effect of line's weight, direction and speed all in one
M
N
negative space
space between objects
non-dominant
the side that doesnt take over.
Lydia Davis on her left hand
O
observational drawing
drawing from what is before you
What your iPhone or cellphone is telling you when you take a picture is only a teeny slice of what is in front of it when you take the picture. It’s an image of a fragment of time of reality.
-Samia Hallaby Slams
online
via the internet
P
perception
how the world continues to seem to us
plastic eraser
sandpapers the top surface of the page, not much intimacy with particles, a bulldozer
poetic
sensitized, keeps coming
R
recreate
remaking the world in ones own perception
represent
translating into an image
rubber eraser
hard or soft, Im confused
S
sculpture
The quote above is from Chloe Piene (Thanks to Ian Trout)
signature
the drawing of your name
smudge stump
smudges in order to diffuse a material and spread it into the tooth of a page....you can make one yourself.... you need sandpaper to clean it
speculative
specular, like a mirror, but with no relfection...
style
technique used to create attitude
subconscious
"Drawings, the best of them, pulsate in my mind; they are always nearly incandescent with opportunity: look at what the eye and the hand and the imagination can do together, let's take it up a notch! Let's go further! Today you can have a thought and call it a drawing and why not since drawing begins with a thought or the hope of birthing one from the subconscious?"
- Hilton Als
substrate
surface for drawing
symmetry
the impossible task of no side being dominant
symmetry
stability with the most mobility