The difference between drawing for representation and abstraction is that in abstraction every shape, line and thought relates to each other. Representation is technique for filling in things to pretend your looking at not a drawing. Drawing shapes is just shapes with no baggage.
So I’m looking at Japanese art and thinking about Pattern languages and creating one for comics. Because I’m working on Abstract Sex comics they have to fit into non-objective terms not the standard narrative image based stuff.
This is a layered work drawing from a project I am working on with Scott Lobdell, chopped into an abstract comic. Artists would really rather look at other artists sketch books, working drawings and roughs. The excitement of the not complete appeals to artists, probably because it shows how some one else makes all their thoughts. Every artist want’s to stop before they finish to keep the bounce in their process alive into the finished work. It’s always funny to see some poor kid trash an artist who has gotten looser and rougher as they get old. Artists know it take more balls and skill to do loose work then finished, a polished manicured well cross hatched surface is just the matter of sitting on your butt for endless hours. Brush strokes that are alive that takes a hundred years of sitting on your butt drawing.
So I wanted to cut my working drawing into an abstraction and see what it feels like. Because in thinking about patterns for abstraction I’m feeling something shifting between my “abstract” comics and my story comics.
So I have a style, as Chaykin says “I draw like I’m from another planet”, Stephen DeStefano says “I don’t draw like anyone else”. what I’m looking for is a way to codify my drawing develop a set of patterns in creating the work that allows me to develop the drawing in a way that I’m interested in that isn’t just re-working Jack and reworking Matisse or whoever. In art school you draw from the gut, technique meets that point where you throw out what is right and