Abstraction through enlargement

Regarding nature and abstraction, we’ve now explored a few ways of doing this, of getting into a more abstract form. In this impulse I would like to suggest one, which we’ve already mentioned briefly: enlargement. You can enlarge something from nature, a very realistic thing from nature, in a way that the viewer can no longer make the connection of what it’s about, even though the contours are drawn from nature.

To get there, the easiest way is to go out into nature with a camera and capture certain impressions. Whether that’s the landscape, a group of trees, one tree, parts of plants, flowers. Whatever it is, you approach it with a sensitive eye and photograph it. Take several pictures. When you get home, you go to your computer or tablet and look at the photos. With this technology you have the possibility to enlarge the thing by zooming in. You can select a section, which the computer automatically enlarges. The best way to do this is to use the “Crop” function under “Edit” on the computer. So, you can crop exactly what you want to enlarge, what details are interesting. This is very simple.

Crop the photo in a way you can imagine that this part is defined by drawing and the other part remains white. Once you’ve found this section, print it out in black and white and then go to your drawing sheet. This results in another alienation, another level of abstraction: first you have a realistic object that you’ve found in nature. Then you take a photograph, which is already the first step of abstraction, because it becomes two-dimensional. Then you enlarge it, that is, you alienate it even further, so that it’s no longer recognizable. But it’s still in color. By printing it out, it’s alienated once again, because it gets blurrier and less crisp and also in black and white. Of course, it would also work in color, that’s up to you.

Then, finally, your intention is at the drawing sheet. Define a square on the sheet, which you’ve already practiced very well in the previous impulses, and use the ruler to determine a good position for this square. The square can be larger than the picture, so that this small section of the plant, only a small part of a leaf or a flower, suddenly becomes large again. You can enlarge it again by filling it into your square. Of course, through the drawing, another level of abstraction is introduced, as you ultimately decide which lines, which shapes you take from the section of the photo.

When you’re determining the areas in relation to what should remain white – because something has to remain white – you can give free rein to your intuition. Yet always with the knowledge that the quality of the line, the dot or the stroke is the decisive element.

If you put a lot of strokes next to each other, they are precisely and beautifully placed, but they create an area. They add up to a shape you can control by making the lines or the strokes softer or stronger. You can conjure up a lot of light in that area. You can change from dark to light, from light to dark. Or you can choose very hard contrasts. If you make the areas you’re marking very dark and the white of the drawing sheet remains white, then these contrasts of light and dark become very strong.

Once you’re done with that, it often proves useful to see if the composition needs a delicate line somewhere, a thin, precise line. That can really refine this enlargement project. Observe. Maybe there’s something in your photo, in the original photo, that has fine lines and that speaks to you. It doesn’t have to be related to the object you’re drawing. But if you integrate it into your drawing, it will be seen in context and have a reference in the picture, it will enter into a dialogue. You can play around in a variety of ways and experiment and try one image after another so that you create a whole series of enlargements.

These enlargements will lead you to many more ideas, in terms of structure. Some flowers or leaves have wonderful structures that you wouldn’t even notice with the naked eye; dots or small raised elements that inspire you to create a structure, or ramifications you didn’t notice before. You magnify all this, as with a microscope, and many small details become visible. This is very inspiring.

Always think about the quality of the line. Think about the structural identity within the picture. That means, if you take short strokes, you continue with short strokes throughout the whole drawing, short strokes everywhere. If you have only long lines, use the long lines for the whole drawing. If you have dots, you use only dots. And if you have several shapes, and one has dots, one has strokes, one has lines, that’s how you start the drawing. But in each element, in each phase in the picture, these structures must be repeated, so that the lines as well as the strokes appear several times in different places, and so do the accumulations of dots, so that they come together. You can see this, for example, in the abstract paintings of Albert Oehlen, or in the wonderful drawings of Vincent van Gogh, where the individual structures in very abstract forms are always in dialogue with each other, and occur everywhere in the picture. This structural identity is very important to understand.

Pay attention to the quality of the line and the structural identity. What’s new is that over time you find more and more terms of how the drawing should be. This works through adjectives. Choose one adjective for your drawing. Mysterious. Exciting. Quiet, very quiet. Delicate. Rough. Aggressive. Brutal. Surprising. You’ll think of many, many terms. And then you’ll take one of these terms as a guiding theme for your drawing project. All the lines in your picture will be based on it. You’ll ask yourself: How should my drawing be today? Mysterious, surprising, and so forth.

The basic requirement of drawing and painting – I remind you once again – is to stay in the moment and to remain with awareness with yourself. These are the fundamental conditions for a successful work. Never forget that and take it with you into your everyday life as well, you can always use this concept. It’s a wonderful thing to remember: to stay with yourself and completely in the moment. Especially, in our case, at the tip of the pencil.

I wish you lots of fun and beautiful results!