Dawn Clements (1958-2018)

The drawing world lost a champion in Dawn Clements, who passed away on December 4 after a battle with cancer. A hero of mine, her images of spaces seduced and held, her marks both descriptive and poetic. Seeing her work in person was to have a quiet conversation with time, as felt and expressed on the page. Pictured below, Strewn, 2011.

https://www.artforum.com/news/dawn-clements-1958-2018-77895

INDA Deadline Approaching

Now in its 14th iteration, Manifest's International Drawing Annual (INDA) once again seeks to showcase the best in contemporary drawing. The INDA will be shifting to a 3-year rotation, so this will be the last opportunity to enter before it comes around again in 2022 (Drawings of the Future!). Entry information can be found here. Deadline is December 31, 2018.

Drawing in Palliative Care

In this article, in the 3/22/18 NYT, Lynn Randolph recounts her experience as an artist-in-residence at a hospital in Houston, Texas, where she works with terminal patients to draw their reflections and sentiments as they near the end of life.

Drawing Discourse 2018 - Deadline 19 November 2017

Once again, submissions are welcome for Drawing Discourse, an excellent survey show held annually at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.  Juried this year by Stuart Shils, Discourse is a cross-disciplinary showcase of contemporary drawing.

All application information can be found here.

Doodle 4 Google

K-12 Doodlers and Doodleuses, the Google logo doodle contest is now open!  From Google's contest info website:

"Students in grades K-12 are invited to take part in the 2016 Doodle 4 Google contest, and create a doodle that tells the world “What I see for the future.” From crayons to clay, graphic design, or even food, young artists can utilize any materials to bring their creation to life. Like all Google Doodles, each doodle must incorporate the letters G-o-o-g-l-e. One national winner will also receive a $30,000 college scholarship. The contest is open for entries from September 14, 2016 to December 2, 2016."

Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice - Submission Deadline 5 September

A direct paste from www.intellectbooks.co.uk
Submission deadline is 5 September
 
Drawing Research, Theory, Practice (D.R.T.P.) promotes and disseminates contemporary drawing practice and research in its current cultural and disciplinary diversity. The journal encourages pluralist forms of discourse, addressing current issues of theory and practice, being concerned with drawing as an interactive process and product, as a form of writing or visual narrative, as a model of representation; an investigative, descriptive or interpretive pursuit, a recording and communicative tool; an interactive and dynamic 'site of conception'; as performance, as support to critical thinking, an interpretative medium and as a site of production.

D.R.T.P. invites practitioners, researchers, educators and theorists in the disciplines of fine art, architecture, design, visual communication, technology, craft, animation, etc. to contribute articles, projects, essay and papers that deal with the various knowledges and representations of drawing.

We invite submissions for the Issue 2 of the Journal including: Articles (5000-6000 words); Research Projects (2000-3000 words); Critical essays (1500-3000 words); Profiles (1000-2000 words) Featured Drawings (1-2); Reviews (1000 - 1500 words) on the latest books, media, museum and gallery exhibitions, conferences, performance, educational and research projects and events that relate to drawing.

Deadline 5th September 2016

Submissions will be double-blind peer-reviewed and must be uploaded via the ‘Drawing Research Theory Practice’ Intellect webpage:
 http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/repository/index/
 Please follow this link, scroll down to “submit article” and generate a user account.

Please submit a PDF Document with 1-6 embedded images (72 dpi), captioned, as Name_Surname.doc. On acceptance, a Word Document with separate images (300dpi) will be required via www.wetransfer.com.

All contributions should be original and not exceed 20 Mb.
All contributors should submit the Metadata (see attached Notes for Contributors)
Authors are responsible for copyright permissions (article (author) and images (artist or institutional copyright / photographer's permission). Only copyright forms supplied by Intellect are accepted (hand-signed, scanned and returned as PDF files).

Please refer to the D.R.T.P. attached Notes for Contributors and to the Intellect House Guidelines for Style. Authors should ensure guidelines are adhered to; failing to do so leads to delays, and may result in the editor having to return or withdraw the submission.

All enquiries should be addressed to the principal editor
Dr Adriana Ionascu, Ulster University, School of Architecture

PES and Company (and Scads of Honda Drawings)

How many different ways can you draw a Honda, inside and out?  For fans of stop-motion drawing animation, this is a feast, and for those looking for an example of how drawing, design, and problem-solving are intimately intertwined, doubly so.  Animator PES pulls out all the stops for this two minute ad on the evolution of the motor company, as depicted through hundreds of hand-drawn images.

Welcome, Drawing Robot Overlords!

Reposted from www.booooooom - “Drawing Operations” is an ongoing collaboration between New York-based artist Sougwen Chung and a robotic arm called Drawing Operations Unit: Generation 1, (D.O.U.G._1). Together the two draw in synchronized performance, with D.O.U.G. mimicking Chung’s movements in real time using a ceiling-mounted camera and computer vision. The arm was designed in collaboration with developer Yotam Mann.

http://www.booooooom.com/2015/11/30/amazing-drawing-performance-between-human-artist-and-robot-arm/

TRACEY - Call for Papers - Drawing and Presence

TRACEY, the journal of drawing and visualization research, has a call for papers on the notion of Presence in Drawing.  Submissions due September 4.

Full text of the call:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/sota/tracey/journal/TRACEY-Presence-CALL.pdf

What is the relationship between ‘drawer’ and ‘drawn’ in the moment of drawing?

Does drawing enable immediate sensuous presence in relation to its object?

How might the sustained attention of drawing be characterized? What is the role of immediacy, mediation, meditation, repetition?

What role do empathy, intensity and materiality play in drawing? What role do order, analysis and clarity play in drawing?

Is drawing a meaningful activity? If so, in what way? Do drawings have meaning? Is their meaning objective, subjective or both?

What does drawing say about desire? Is drawing a form of appropriation, a will-to-possess, a way of taking hold of things? Or does it imply a moment of dispossession, a surrender of ‘self’ in search of a new understanding?

Do accident, loss of control and the properties of the medium influence thinking?

Does drawing offer a mode of engagement that enables understanding the world in terms of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’, in terms of dynamic processes rather than static objects?

Does drawing reduplicate the world or can it transform it? Is it a kind of metamorphosis?

Thinking Through Drawing - The Show

Deadline is August 15, 2015 for this international exhibition in London.

https://drawingandcognition.wordpress.com/we-all-draw-thinking-drawings-the-show/

Announcing Thinking through Drawing open exhibition, 2015:
We All Draw: Thinking Drawings 5-9th November 2015
Deadline for submissions: August 15th
Thinking through Drawing are pleased to announce our open exhibition, as part of the 2015 International Symposium: WE ALL DRAW.
We invite all practitioners who use drawing and sketching in their practice, to submit examples of ‘drawings that think’ to be exhibited at the Bargehouse, Southbank, London from the 5th to 8th of November.
When do surgeons use drawing? How do science teachers use drawing? Why does the engineer use drawing? How can drawing be used as a social practice? Where do artists draw? Does drawing facilitate dialogue? Could a drawing resolve a dispute? Does drawing promote wellbeing? Can a drawing sing?
We encourage you to send drawings made privately in your sketchbook or studio as a part of your preliminary working process, as well as ‘finished’ drawings that are a product of a thinking process, that facilitate a certain state of mind, or function as a tool for thought. We welcome everything from spontaneous drawings on the back of envelopes to sustained drawings on traditional drawing papers, providing they can be folded into an A4 envelope (9” by 11”).
*** Please note: there is a SUBMISSION FEE of £25, to cover the cost of the venue, hanging and return shipment. ***

Drawing In - Seeking Book Proposals

British publisher IB Tauris is launching a new book series, Drawing In, dedicated to volumes on the practice, theory, and pedagogy of drawing, and is currently accepting proposals.  From the Drawing Research Network announcement:

"The Drawing In series encompasses scholarly monographs and edited anthologies. In addition, the series encourages the publication of books that are practice-led, driven by creative textual strategies and/or move beyond the page. The books published within Drawing In will address the relationship between theoretical debate and its integral materiality. Proposals for the series should delineate their topic with specific reference to how they will argue through drawing in both form and content."

For guidelines on sumbitting book proposals, go here.

Jacqueline Bishop on Claire Gilman, Drawing Center Curator

"In a sense," she said, "every show that we put on seeks to answer the question of what drawing is. In every show we are asking the same question, while providing very different answers. We are always trying, in our shows, to test the boundaries of what is immediately apprehensible as drawing. I have a more intuitive sense of what drawing is, but I would say that more than anything else it has to do with a line, with passage from one place to another. Whereas painting is more concerned with being an all-over composition on a contained surface, drawing is about the linear path from one place to another."

Read more on Claire Gilman, Drawing Center Curator, in the Huffington Post article by Jacqueline Bishop.

Pulled from the Headlines

All the arguments you'll need, should you have to defend drawing's place in The Curriculum:

Why drawing needs to be a curriculum essential - Anita Taylor, The Guardian UK, May 29, 2014

Thinking Through Drawing - 2013 Conference Proceedings

The complete proceedings from the 2013 Drawing Research Network Conference held this past October in New York, hosted by Columbia University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are now available online in pdf form.  This is an invaluable document, presenting a range of papers that examine the relationship between pedagogy, drawing, and cognition, from practitioners worldwide.  From the links between medicine and drawing, to drawing and a philosophy of mind, the papers cover vast and deep territory. Should you be interested in collaborative drawing, my paper on three collaborative drawing projects begins on page 166.  Be sure to look at past years' conference proceedings as well.

http://www.drawing-research-network.org.uk/drn-2013-proceedings-new-york/

Court Drawn

A striking portrait of the career of courtroom sketch artist Gary Myrick, this short documentary by Ramtin Ninzad for the New York Times' Op Doc series is also commentary on the wane of attention and empathy.

Graphic Detail

The Economist website sports a feature I have just discovered and quickly fallen for, called Graphic Detail.  A new visual element every day, from charts, to maps, to drawings, GD provides insight into the news in a visually explicit and textured way.  This very recent set of drawn insights into the building of the Eurotunnel sheds light on the inventional strengths of the pen in hand.

Jane Fine - Drawings and Pours

The Drawing Program at the University of South Carolina is thrilled to welcome artist Jane Fine as our visiting artist this week.  Jane's work exemplifies the notion of a hybrid drawing practice, moving fluidly between ways of making on the page, resulting in a raucous tumble of visual thought.

Temple of Dendur - Hand-drawn Animation at the Met

This October, I had the pleasure of designing and running a drawing workshop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as part of the International Drawing and Cognition Conference, hosted jointly by Columbia University Teachers College, the Drawing Research Network, and the Met. Here is one of the resulting animations from our session:

WWW Drawing Workshop

The WWW Drawing Workshop, held at Penn State University's Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture from March 29-31, 2013, yeilded this brilliant video from Virtual Beauty.  Instant inspiration at:

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WWW Drawing Workshop: Penn State University's Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture from Virtual Beauty on Vimeo.

Open Source Drawing Software

From Skencil to Inkscape, open source drawing software has been in our midst for years, with dozens of variants on the theme, and hundreds of code contributors worldwide.  One among many, Alchemy offers "an open drawing project aimed at exploring how we can sketch, draw, and create on computers in new ways. Alchemy isn’t software for creating finished artwork, but rather a sketching environment that focuses on the absolute initial stage of the creation process. Experimental in nature, Alchemy lets you brainstorm visually to explore an expanded range of ideas and possibilities in a serendipitous way."  As alternatives to Illustrator or Photoshop, most come up a few tools shy of satisfying, but as screen-based sketchbooks, they are great to have in the mix.