sketching together

Here's the other 2 drawings that follow on from my previous post!

The first is a 2 minute portrait of my very self, drawn by the student sitting next to me in class. I like the energy they captured in their pencil marks, and the addition of a bit of felt-tipped colour to highlight my flower headband and earrings. She apologised that she didn't get to finish my face, but I like the result....perhaps 'unfinishedness' is an aspect of innovation? - Knowing when to leave a piece incomplete, with the possibility of being worked into at a later date, or simply to place emphasis on what is present, through the absence of the missing details... I also think this drawing makes me look a bit like some kind of tribal princess, it's slightly Pocahontus-esqe. I have never been drawn in this way before, and I quite like it!

Secondly, this was my collaborative 'mapping' drawing of Chelsea, made with Katie in the medium of fine liners and coloured pencils. Looking at both of the maps we'd drawn individually (you can see mine at the end of the post below this), we realised that we had mapped in a similar way, both choosing to depict a birds eye view looking down over the college campus. So, with this shared perspective, we decided just to make our collaborative drawing simultaneously, both drawing on the paper at once, to see how it would turn out. We discussed the direction/orientation and scale very quickly, and then set to work. As Katie had previously been drawing in fine liner, she began marking out various buildings on our paper, and I naturally started adding details and colour with my coloured pencils. I was actually quite amazed at how smoothly and easily our collaboration worked- despite the fact that the paper was only A4 sized, our hands worked around each other as we drew rather than getting in each others way, and each time one of us rotated the paper, the other responded by simply working on a different section of the map. I enjoyed the pace of this collaborative drawing exercise, and I think it can be quite refreshing to co-draw/co-design with another.

A collaborative drawing of Chelsea with Katie.

It reminded me of a print workshop we had in our Textiles Practice at the start of term, where I was learning about flocking and foiling techniques with another 2 students in my group. To test out the techniques, we made a few samples together, with one person picking a screen, another person selecting fabric, and I layed the flock and foil papers out for us to print with. Our final print was a fun combination of each of the different elements we'd selected and brought together. I'd cut some squares of flocking paper up and placed them ontop of certain sections of the final layer of print, and the other 2 students laughed and said that they never would have thought to try that if they'd been designing individually. I think this example, alongside my collaborative sketch experiment with katie today, just shows how designing with other people can lead to 'innovation'- both in your approach of how you adapt your way of working to logistically accommodate another person in the process, and also result wise, as you have collective input that comes together to form something you couldn't or perhaps wouldn't produce alone.