Temporary Drawings

(C) Mick Buston

However as normal, things percolate after a while and I was reminded of some photographs I made whilst in Marrakesh back at the end of 2013. There was this guy, no idea how old he was, but he was walking around with this stick. He then started to mark out a pretty much full size football pitch in the sand on the beach. I watched him for ages, and back then I recalled thinking about how much work he was putting into this in what would only be a temporary pitch.

So with that in mind, I started thinking that this could be more interesting than at first thought. I started paying attention to things more acutely. Although I didn't get a photo or video of it, I was watching rain on the window of the bus and then as the drops formed together and created rivulets that made meandering lines down the window.

I've also been noticing the temporary art created by baristas on my coffee, to be honest I've never paid too much attention to them in the past.

Today I documented how that changed, reduced and finally disappeared with every sip I took of my flat white.

Looking at these images now, this is more about the impermanence of the image rather than anything I have created, although I guess each sip I took altered the image in some way.

Paying attention to the latte art got me thinking about how else to temporarily draw with liquids. I got an old takeaway dish and put a small amount of water in the bottom before adding a small amount of ink with a glass nib pen. As the ink lay on the water, I started to slowly agitate it with the pen nib. What I found was that my intervention was only the start, the rest of the process was out of my control as the ink reacted in its own way with the water. Later on, as seen in video above, agitating the whole dish created shapes and elements that I could not have done consciously as the ink got more dilute and appeared layered. The obvious reference to some of the shapes would be small jellyfish or even octopus, odd given that it was ink that created them. There is a gossamer like transparency in the way the ink holds together when agitated that looks like a veil, something really quite beautiful. This changed again as the agitated the water and ink more aggressively and stirred them both together. As they separated there is almost a thick dark smoke look appearing, again something quite beautiful that I would not know how to create in a more permanent form.

shapes created with glass nib pen and mild agitation of the dish containing oil and water

Screenshot from video showing the smoke like texture created after the ink and water were agitated then separated.

Couldn't get away from the thought of the rainwater on the windows of the bus the other day so decided to try and recreate it.

I used our shower head against the shower screen, varying pressures and moving the head around to create different shapes. Unfortunately my videoing skills let me down so all I have now are the results.

I didn't manage to capture the rivulets as they run down too quickly but I was left with a series of droplets that remained static for minutes after the shower stopped before slowly making there way down the screen and finally evaporating.

As days pass, I think of new variations on temporary drawings that we experience everyday but often without noticing.

Years ago we lived in Norwich and there was an area there where graffiti artists were allowed to practice with full permission. It fascinated me and over the course of a year I documented it using photography.

On one occasion there was an amazing portrait of Keith Flint from The Prodigy. So detailed and so beautifully done. When I first saw it, somebody had defaced it but nevertheless, there it stood for all to see and enjoy. I'm not sure it is was the next day or some time after but when I went back, I noticed someone had already started to overpaint it to make space for their creation. This seems so cruel when you think of the work gone into it and how precious we are about preserving art on canvas, but I spoke to some of the artists and they full embraced this temporary nature as part of the culture of how they work. Each piece gives way to a new piece in a constant evolution.

Beach

Back to creating my own temporary drawings, I am really struggling to do 'stick on a beach'. So obvious for me to do this given that I leave a 4 minute walk to the beach but I think it's the public aspect of it that troubles me. Yet I still can't just leave it. I do have a compulsion some times to complete things and don't like bits undone. So despite not wanting to do it, I can't move on from it either. Grrrr.

So despite what I wrote yesterday, I decided I can't ignore this any longer. I headed into the studio at Margate but on the way I found one of the smaller beaches that was more secluded. It's actually right behind the Turner Contemporary and there is an Antony Gormley figure in the sea thats revealed as the tide is high. Maybe some of his creative talent will rub off.

As I walked down to the shoreline, I noticed lots of marks and lines in the sand. This exercise has definitely made me more aware of how many temporary marks surround us.

Again as I was leaving, I also saw chalk marks and writing on the walls knowing that one good downpour of rain would remove dedications of love, political statements and general doodles.

I came unprepared but trusted that somewhere along the say I would find a suitable drawing implement. And I did. As I walked along I found a short piece of stick and brought that with me. My plan originally was a long stick that I could drag but that would change now that my implement had.

Before I got started I thought again about the purpose of this exercise, making temporary drawings. With this in mind I headed to the shore with the tide incoming. Despite the size of the beach, I chose to place myself in one small area, rooted so my drawing had limits. Given the size of the beach, there are infinite boundaries and I didn't want to grapple with that scale.

Drawing while videoing changed the drawing I feel, or certainly the experience, as without realising it I had been watching myself draw on the screen rather than watching my hand in motion.

In the video below you can see the marks being made, again singular rather than continuous, and as the drawing started to expand to its limited boundary the tide came in and with immediate effect erased elements of it before the sand gave up its form and returned a clean slate.

Summary

As I worked through this exercise it thought so much about temporary marks, markings and drawings. Apart from what I have said above, I also considered about how thinking of most of the marks we make as temporary in some nature. Right now my intention is to work within editorial illustration and that could be considered temporary if considered in its traditional form of newspapers and magazines. However now with work published to the internet, does what was once deemed temporary become permanent?