Drawing a Language

I recently had a collaborative show at First Site Gallery at RMIT University with the very talented and creative James Little, www.jameslittle.info.

The works produced for the show, were focused more on the process of our practice and how we both use mark making to create a drawing, then the particular imagery represented in the work.  The 'language' is the way in which we communicate our ideas and thoughts as artists.  How we create the composition, the materials we use, the medium we work in, we utilise these things and more to create a drawing.

The exhibition consisted of three drawings, James and I both created one separately to each other, but the third and central piece was where the collaboration aspect of the show came together.  the image below.

We were incredibly unsure of how our styles would work together, and there was a lot of discussion as to how we were going to do it.  We had to constantly talk about where we were going to bleed into each others half and how far we would go, how dark would we go tonally, and how much detail would be enough.  It became a real fluid way of working, one which I'm not used to, but it meant that the work was constantly evolving and being discussed, which is something which comes out in the work.