MS: The drawing instrument is the technical pencil, intended originally to deliver drawings for use in construction, like building and engineering. It is only since the eighteenth century that architectural plans have been used to guide construction. Before this a drawing might offer a model or idea, but was not considered a direct and deliberate way of translating two into three dimensions. Construction workers, builders and engineers did not work by scaling up technical drawings.
There’s an issue here of translation, the relation of drawing to action, and to materials with which we build. Pencil work involves a combination of graphite and clay. Graphite is both pigment and lubrication, smoothing friction over the paper surface. Clay hardens the soft graphite and modifies the dark tone. The clay base is index of the earth itself, translated through drawing into building and form. Drawing can, in this way, take us back to elemental basics.
Pencil, technique and material pose questions about modern pictorial space, rendering practice, and their relationship to material experience and reality, such as construction and engineering.
