RE: [-empyre-] Fill the Void (-empyre- 15)

[Chris Ashley <chrisashley@yahoo.com>]

--- rich white <counterwork@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> what happens if you do leave?
> list ends?

I wish I hadn't said that out loud.  It wasn't a
threat, just something on my mind give what's happened
here.  Best for me to just not say more, I think.

> so chris, you use the blog to structure your
> practice.

Almost five years ago, when I was exploring weblogs
for edutech, I made a personal policy that I would
post something everyday, because I didn't think I'd
fully understand the tool unless I was committed to
it, had deadlines, exposed what I was doing, working
at it.  It's the kind of things students are asked to
do all the time, but it's a well know fact that if you
put a group of teachers (I'm talking K-12 teachers) in
a room and ask them to write three paragraphs about
just about anything most will balk because they aren't
writers.  They'll say they don't have time, or they'll
be upset they're being told what to do, or they'll
complain that they're being asked to produce something
outside of their job, but the truth is many teachers
are not authors, don't think of themselves as primary
voices.  You can apply this kind of things to all
kinds of settings- programmers will complain about how
the bigwigs and marketing people don't understand
their work, or a master carpenter will gripe about how
a supervisor doesn't understand the skills, time, and
resources needed to do something right.  And so on. 
So I put myself in that position and yes, the weblog
structure, being diaristic, does structure my work.  I
have a commitment, at a minimum, to one drawing
everyday.  I try to make it one good drawing, which
means more time.  Sometimes I think it works, other
times... you know.

> does this
> sometimes dictate how a drawing will be turn out?

Well, it certainly dictates the size of things.  I
mean, they're small in size, but right in terms of
scale.  Regarding other qualities...

> due to all the time
> constraints that come with a day time-limit (your
> own personal time,
> time with friends/familiy, other jobs/commitments,
> this list etc...) do
> you find that the time spent drawing alters each
> day? do you have a set
> time to produce the drawing?

Time can be a factor.  I don't have a set time, but
later at night is when many of them happen.  Because I
can change the time for any post I can make a drawing
show up on the day and at the time I wish, so from day
to day there can be a bit of pre and post-dating of a
drawing.  Basically, today's drawing is for today, and
tomorrow's drawing will be drawn tomorrow, but I do
take advantage of being able to shift time zones a
bit.

I don't think I've ever said about a drawing, "Man,
I'm out of time, I'll post it as is."  No, I try to
make a successful drawing- that's another topic.  But
sometimes they aren't as fully successful-  here's a
case:  I work and work on something and it's just not
coming together, and it's late and my head wants to
drop on the keyboard in need of sleep.  If I can I'll
start something new and hope it comes together
quickly, which interesting, is often the case.  But
sometimes I just have to go with what I've got for
that day.

Is this too mundane an answer for your question?

> do you plan drawings beforehand? do you have an idea
> of form and colours
> before you start or do you just dive in? I'd like to
> think that you just
> start... pulling forms out of a table.
> and... (lots of questions) do the titles come first?
> I am enjoying the
> empyre drawings and their links to particular posts.

I've found I like lists of titles, or words, or a
concept as a way of making a series of drawings over
time, or I like to have some process for determining
what the drawing will be about.  I like to work in
series so I know more or less what I'll be responding
to for X number of days.  At this point I always work
in series- some series are only conceptually uniform
(all the drawings address a specific topic), and
others also have a visual uniformity (they're all the
same size, or I'm working with a constant palette, or
there is some effect from drawing to drawing). 
Despite that, however, there is a diving in and
figuring it out.  Things get copies and pasted around,
sizes can change- it's more like collage.  I can
preserve each stage of a  a drawing by copying and
pasting its current state to work on- that way earlier
states can be easily returned to, not unlike how using
layers in Photoshop preserve various states of an
image.

If there is a title it usually comes first.  Some
untitled series are more about the image than the
idea.  

When I agreed to be a guest on empyre the idea popped
into my head that each day I would do a drawing in
response to a post, and that there would be no other
real consistency besides reference to empyre, the use
of HTML, and my little bag of tricks.  I would pull
words out that had some meaning to them- sometimes
whole phrases, other times more in the Gysin/Burroughs
cutup way of mashing words together.  I decided to
post the URL to the list and by replying to each day's
post I'd get a threaded list of drawing announcements
in the archives.  Great idea, huh?  Yeah, I know, it's
the little things that amuse us and make life worth
living.

Chris