{"id":1072,"date":"2026-10-24T21:29:02","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T21:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gaelle-artstudio.com\/plog2026\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2026-10-25T22:27:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T22:27:45","slug":"exercise-6-9-labour-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gaelle-artstudio.com\/plog2026\/exercise-6-9-labour-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Exercise 6.9 \u2022 Labour & Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Brief<\/summary>\n
In 2014, OCA drawing student Paul Grady made a series of drawings called 12 Months\u2019 Hard Labour for which he made a drawing every day using a variety of highly labour-intensive techniques. Look at the examples on the next pages and notice how the subject matter is very slight and how that operates with the enormity of the effort put into the drawings\u2019 production. This project also highlights the importance and potential value of spending time working rigorously on the application of drawing.\n\nAim\nSpending time making a drawing can shift the way you think and feel. Careful observation of tonal variation and detailed articulation of lines and angles mean that you are spending much longer than normal looking at an object. Equally, employing labour-intensive techniques such as hatching, or shading large areas, gives you time within a drawing where your thoughts can wander and movement might become less conscious. These methods also leave evidence of time spent embedded in the drawing for viewers to pick up on. How might you use that in a drawing? For example, could it lead to a drawing feeling authoritative, contemplative, intimate or commanding \u2013 or dislocate its interpretation in other ways?\n\nMethod\nResearch drawing methods that take time to use and appeal to you, for example hatching, shading, using small media to make big drawings, scale drawing, hyperrealism, etc.\n\nChoose a subject for your drawing that might benefit from having time spent in either of the two directions suggested:\n\nFrom the viewer\u2019s perspective. For example, a minutely detailed drawing of a piece of discarded fruit peel might set up an interesting relationship. Equally, an eight-foot high drawing of a two-year-old child might shift its interpretation.\n\nFor yourself. Choose something that you would like to spend time coaxing into being and thinking about. You might spend time creating a hyperrealistic portrait of someone you love, or carefully using a pin to scratch the face off a politician you don\u2019t like. It may well be that the labour becomes the subject and you have simply decided to shade an entire sheet of lining paper with a ballpoint pen.\n\nReflection\nMake notes in your learning log about what happened when you made a drawing that took time and labour to produce.<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n
Slow drawing methods<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
I found several drawing approaches whose value comes from the time it takes to apply them, building images from many small, deliberate decisions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hatching, cross-hatching and contour hatching<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I really like this method of creating form, shadow, distance, texture and even movement with different lines, changing curvature, thickness, spacing, length. I’ve seen Albrecht D\u00fcrer’s Young Hare<\/a><\/em> in the Albertina Museum in Vienna a few years back and was taken aback. I think I’m fascinated by the focus and attention required to complete pieces like this. I was similarly impressed by Lucian Freud’s Portrait of Christian Berard<\/a><\/em> which was exhibited as part of the National Portrait Gallery exhibition Drawing into Painting<\/a><\/em> last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interesting tutorials and prompts include Jackson’s Art Prompts Course: The Fundamentals of Drawing<\/a>, Alphonso Dunn’s YouTube pen and ink playlist<\/a> and the Met graphite techniques page<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Metalpoint (silverpoint)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I discovered this technique through my research. A silver metal stylus drawn over a prepared ground. Erasing is damaging so it requires commitment and patience. Apparently preparing the surface takes days as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found useful resources for future references at the Met’s Metalpoint materials and techniques<\/a>, Lauren Amalia Redding’s review of a chalk ground for silverpoint<\/a>. I like the feeling of sgraffito on paint and this may be interesting to try. I don’t have the materials to hand however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hyperrealism in graphite<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I know of Vija Celmins’ drawings from my Foundation course. I found an interesting article<\/a> by Amanda Hunter Johnson about her technique based on deliberate mark-making, experimenting with different grades of graphite pencils from hard H to soft B grades, and explicit rules such as no erasing among others or moving from the lower right towards the upper left. I also found a comprehensive learning resource<\/a> from the National Galleries of Scotland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Celmins explained her work as \u201cre-describing\u201d the image \u2015 working from a photograph and re-inventing it mark by mark in another medium.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
I also discovered the work of Emme Towers-Evans<\/a> through an interview on Jackson’s Art Blog. Like Celmin, photographs play a crucial role in her practice as well as zoom lenses. I found her work fascinating. I’m both attracted and deterred by the industrious process that underpins this work. Also I’m more fascinated by the drawings of Lucian Freud or Domenico Gnoli<\/a> where the attention to details and careful labour are apparent but the resulting image is not so directly looking like a photograph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grids and incremental scale drawing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Chuck Close’s Robert\/104,072<\/em> (1973\u201374) at MoMA<\/a> is built from one dot in each of 104,072 grid squares, each square revisited about ten times on average, over fourteen months. Close said, “No work of art was ever made without a process<\/em>.” I found a grid self-portrait lesson plan<\/a> from the Buffalo AKG Art museum based on his work. I’ve always wondered how this gets done but I suppose there are now many tools which can be used for pixelisation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Labour and time<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
I approached this in a slightly different way. I had already completed two slow reflective drawings earlier in the module. I enjoyed working on them but I think also they lack energy and feel constrained, or restrained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I was more interested in the idea of repetition. I can (with some difficulty) get to hyper focus on a piece and develop it over several hours and days. I seem to struggle more when it comes to revisit past works, or follow the same pattern or approach over several pieces. I attempted to do this in two exercises: The 303030 sketchbook challenge and 12 mini artist portraits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
303030 Sketchbook Challenge<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
This is a social media challenge which invites artists to join in and follow open prompts to create 30 sketchbook pieces completed in 30 minutes over 30 days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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