robbiekarmel

This is a selection of thinking-drawings from my notebooks. They are a means to very quickly simulate, record, and test ideas for planned works. When planning out works there is a process of imagination and/or simulation; whether designing a chair or proposing an arrangement for a drawing/sculpture experiment I am internally acting out the process of making. The drawing is an active part of the thinking through of the propositions, as well as serving as a record of the process of thinking as well as the idea itself. The pencil and paper become an external memory system.

^I have been drawing this proposed chair repeatedly, I find it easiest to plan and simulate the sitting-in and making-off the chair when I am sitting in a similar chair. So rather than looking at a chair in profile I am drawing myself from an external perspective, relying on my proprioceptive and tactile awareness, my understanding of the chair (and of what chairs are), my learned familiarity with the anatomy of chairs and the body, and my learned and practiced skill in mimetic representation.

In addition to the proposition of the function of the chair there is also the simulation of the making of the chair, what wood I have access to, how the tools will shape the wood, how the wood will respond to the tools, and so on. Before I even pick up a plane it is there as an extension of my body.

Although at first glance this sketching process may align itself more with design practice methods, I am using it as a launching pad for the consideration of drawing and making as extensions of the body. This process will also serve to plan the apparatus that I intend to make to facilitate  more complex arrangements of drawing and sculpting projects.