Assignment – 02 – Instructional Drawing

I gave my three “executors” the following instructions with the intent to both emulate Lewitt in some way and frustrate the hell out of my participants.

A five sided, partially curved shape, with an upper left side 3 times as large as the upper right side. Place pencil on paper. Never allow the pencil to come off the paper. The upper left side begins from a point halfway a point halfway between the midpoint of the midpoint of the top side of the square and the upper right corner of the square and the center of the square to the midpoint of a line drawn from the midpoint of the left side to the center of the square. The upper right connects to the upper left side and is drawn to a point halfway between the midpoint of a line drawn from the midpoint of the right side of the square and the center of the square. A third side is drawn down from the last connecting point until it intersects a line drawn between the midpoint of the right side and the center. Placing your thumb on the bottom left point of the shape, draw a curved line around your thumb and connect. Stop here or at broken pencil.

Here were the three results:

A pretty decent try. The participant got very frustrated and disregarded the “no lifting” rule.

This one was a great attempt. The participant did get a bit overwhelmed but quelled their frustration and followed all rules of the drawing.

This participant, after staring at the instructions for ten minutes, became so frustrated they drew a small circle in the upper right hand corner. Disregarding every rule on the page.

Here was the original “approximation”:

In hindsight, I believe that my instructions were formulated fine. They did achieve the goal of making at least a few of the participants frustrated. I did not expect the frustration to be enough to completely stop one of them in their tracks however. I would like to see a number of these Lewitt style drawings done with the “no lifting” rule and see if it produces any faint-lined results which are aesthetically pleasing.