Auroque.zine

Saturday, 16 April 2016

Karla Ortiz

Puerto Rican Karla Ortiz is a relevant presence at the third editon of Trojan Horse was a Unicorn (THU) that is taking place from the 15th to the 19th September in Tróia, Portugal. Based in San Francisco, this illustrator has as main activity the work she develops for Marvel Film Studios, where she’s presently collaborating in the production of the movie Dr. Strange.
Aside her main activity and her immersion in the digital artistic world, Karla Ortiz also produces drawings of great beauty in which the medium of choice is graphite and where the surreal and oneiric nature is a dominant. Auroque.zine here shares a time-lapse video showing the production of one of her drawings.

Medieval Scribbles

Drawing executed to indicate an important part of the text for future reference [Courtesy Dr. Erik Kwakkel and the Library of the University of Leiden]

Let's consider the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: you are in a meeting with your group of work on the multinational corporation in which you exert functions. It's been more than a hour and a half that the group is in a discussion about the 'sex of the angels'. You work in front of a computer for eight hours a day and at the present the job you were assigned has some problems that need to be addressed. While the person in charge of directing the meeting doesn’t question the evolution of your job, you make some scribbles on the pages of the dossier that you have before you, lost in your thoughts, far away from that room. The scribbling evolves, some of them having sense, others not, but always within a discrete fashion along with what seems to you as hours and hours of meeting...

Scenario 2: the teacher of the course that you are forced to attend is in a uninterrupted verbiage since the very beginning of the class (three quarters of an hour before...) and it promises to continue for the next hour. The course that you are attending doesn’t have, in fact, any use for the ends that the graduation is proposed to. But it’s part of the curriculum and without the approval at that course you will not get your certificate. How to survive, then, at a time like this? One solution will be scribbling in the advised official book for class orientation (which was, after all, quite expensive) to the taste of thoughts and daydreaming for which the window next to your desk much contributes…

We might think that perhaps these two scenarios (which so many other variations on time and space) are maladies of the modern times. But maybe that’s not true. In fact, some books of the 13th and 14th centuries show us a different reality. Dr. Erik Kwakkel, a medieval books scholar, shows us some of the oldest doodles made on the margins of books pages. However, most of these doodles would have different purposes depending on the person who made them, being able to be distinguished in three kinds. The first kind of doodle, those that can be found in the pages of the beginning or the end of the books, had the purpose of previously try the pen as well as the gesture, in what one might call 'pen trials', with which the writer or the amanuensis would undertake the endeavour of writing the book. As Dr. Kwakkel refers, the scribbles of this nature demonstrates much of the of the scribe's way of being, for he had to adapt the style of the writing (in form and content) according to the monastery where he worked, the region or even the country to where he moves. Nevertheless, the pen trials were invariably done in the standard style of the place or region where scribe's training took place.
The second kind of scribbles is that that served as text markers for the portions of text that the readers considered important for future reference. Although the value of the middle age books would be compared at that time to other luxury items (let’s not forget that we are talking about books whose production is prior to the advent of European letterpress typography) we can find yet a third type of scribbles and drawings that seem to be indicative of one and one thing only: boredom! As it looks, the dullness of reading a philosophy book at school - especially if you are a young student... - is transversal to the course of the centuries and it goes back to the first book editions. When it comes to monotony and boredom nothing is held to sacred or to valuable…
(via Colossal)

Doodle on the lower margin of a manuscript page containing Juvenal's "Satires" [Courtesy Dr. Erik Kwakkel and the Library of the University of Leiden]

Figures with pointy noses, Library of the University of Leiden, 13th century (MS BPL 6 C) [Courtesy of Dr. Erik kwakkel and the Library of the University of Leiden]

[Courtesy of Dr. Erik Kwakkel and the Library of the University of Leiden]

Doodle discovered in a 13th century law manuscript (Amiens BM 347) [Courtesy of Dr. Erik Kwakkel and the Library of the University of Leiden].

Pen trials by writing short sentences and drawings. These 'pen trials' are from the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 15th century [Courtesy of Dr. Erik Kwakkel and the Library of the University of Leiden]

Friday, 15 April 2016

The Art of Breakfast

Artist Danny Gregory shows how drawing is a tool of observation and registration of the everyday of the individual. One must merely have present the notion that art comes before food…
For all of those who want to experience drawing and celebrate life:

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

Patrick Vale: A Step Beyond The Sketchbook

Time lapse of the work Colossus by artist Patrick Vale. The magnanimity of this work elevates the notion of graphic journal to another dimension. The drawing in question is not a graphic journal page but instead a drawing that leapt from there to a sheet (or better, three sheets) of paper. London based artist, Patrick Vale, draws a magnificent view from of the Manhattan borough from teh Empire State Building. In an interview Vale states that its concern is not to produce a true representation but instead to let the pen decide what is necessary to show. The time lapse videos have gone viral and launched the artist's name.

Wednesday, 26 August 2015

The Bodies of Justine Albisser aka Sirlonie

Justine Albisser (aka Sirlonie) show us the purity of the traditional drawing materials (charcoal and graphite), where the final product doesn’t hide the underlying elements (particularly visible in the hands of the models). It’s this dimension that constitutes part of the magic of drawing on paper for it’s inseparable from the artist’s attitude, its error or hesitation when they occur, or inseparable, simply, from the working stages and layers (physical or psychological) laid one upon the other during the process that ranges from the white sheet of paper until the reunion of the final product. The dominant motive of these works it’s the body and the face without being directly related to the portrait, of expressionist character and far from the caricature.
(website: http://sirlonie.tumblr.com/)

Tuesday, 25 August 2015

The Upsetting Drawings of Sandra Vázquez De La Horra

A Toda A Prisa / In A Great Hurry, 2009. Graphite on paper, waxed. 35 x 25 cm.

At a first glance, the drawings of Sandra Vázquez De La Horra immediately moves us towards the direction of the fears that we’ve locked up in a box deep in a corner of our mind. They are the fears that we know are there, that we want to forget and even less we want to touch them.
Transposed the barrier/attitude of judgement, we can observe that the work of Sandra Vázquez sits on deep spiritual notions obtained in the continuous path of the search for spiritual knowledge to understand the mundanity of what surrounds us. South America – the artist was born in Chile, in 1967 – is fertile ground in such sources of knowledge: Pomba Gira and the Umbanda in Brasil; the celebration of the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and the adoration of Santa Muerte (Holy Death), to cite only a few examples of deep rooted cults into the popular tradition and which origins are actually placed in the pre-Colombian era. The idea of death it’s recurrent in the work of Sandra De La Horra. But here, by opposition of the notion of end, death is worked (shown) as a constant of life. And to confirm it, there’s the immediate perception that we have of her works when we feel that we’ve just entered a bad dream that we had during the night and that, simultaneously, we cannot escape. We don’t rest indifferent at these drawings that seem drafts made by someone who have been in another place, an almost unreachable place, and that came back to show us how it was.
(via Cargo Collective )
Sandra Vázquez De La Horra is represented by David Nolan Gallery, New York.