One thing that interested me during the creation of the instructions was what people would draw when I asked them to draw technology. Would they draw flatscreen TV’s? Cellphones or telephones? Laptops or desktops? Another thing that interested me was what people would put for Gender neutral bathroom signs.

If I had to improve one thing, I would have created more rows and columns and asked more people to partake in the instructional drawing. I think it’d be really cool to see the different illustrations over a large group, while taking gender, age, and socioeconomic status into account.

Drawing Five Heads

Setup:

-Hold your paper landscape style.

-Draw two vertical lines down the entire paper measuring 4.25 inches in and 6.75 inches in.

-Draw horizontal lines going across the entire paper measuring 3 inches down and 5.5 inches down.

-Draw within the cross you’ve created.

-On a computer search for images of head proportions, have this in front of you.

 

Before you start:

-There is going to be a head in the center of the cross.

-There will be two heads on the side of that head facing outwards, both in the center of the space on each side.

-There will be a head viewed from beneath at the top of the cross and a head viewed from above at the bottom of the cross. The heads should be tilted enough that they fit in the space.

-Each head should take up as much space as possible without drawing outside of the lines.

-The heads include their necks.

-You can start with any head.

-Each head is the same person.

-Each head should be consistent with the rest of the heads.

 

Drawing the Heads:

-You cannot choose family when choosing models, you can choose celebrities, and you can look up pictures for reference.

-Imagine someone that you have looked up to at some point in your life.  Give the heads their jawline.

-Imagine someone who looked up to you in your life. Give the heads their hair.

-Imagine someone who you can always laugh with. Give the heads their ears along with any piercings.

-Imagine someone that has hurt you in your life, with or without meaning to. Give the heads their lips.

-Imagine someone who has helped you in your life, or someone who coached you. Give the heads their nose and all the marks or freckles in the middle of the face.

-Imagine someone you are or once were in love with. Give the heads their eyes, eyebrows and any wrinkles or marks around their eyes and forehead.

-Imagine someone you used to be really close to. Give the heads their cheeks and cheekbones, along with any skin blemishes or makeup.

-Imagine someone who is lost in life. Give the heads their neck and any jewelry they wear.

-Erase lines drawn in setup

Thank you (in order) David Gordon, anonymous, and Will Taylor for the drawings.

I liked that people enjoyed drawing my instructional drawing, I’ve got feedback that was: “It made me think about people I haven’t thought about in a long time” The interactions between the drawing are strong. These incredibly personal portraits of people are looking at each other whether you stack the drawings vertically or horizontally. I should have never asked my subjects to draw the necks, it emphasized the ending point of the boundary lines I gave, which I wanted to be invisible in the drawing.

According to the designing manifesto, the process is the product. I was really interested in the process of creating drawings, one that no matter who followed the instructions the result would be different and when working with my own drawing instructions that was my focus. I wanted to make instructions that no matter who followed them each piece would be different. Below are the set of instructions I created for my instructional drawings. I also wanted to make the instructions as easy to follow as possible so when writing them, I attempted to separate different aspects required in the piece, from the initial set up to the actual drawing.

Concept:

This project looks to create a series of drawing based off instructions

You will be provided with a pencil, a ruler and a clear sheet of paper

Instructions

On the clear sheet of paper Create a Frame

1. STEP 1

Label the top of the page T

Label the bottom of the page B

Label the left side of the page L

Label the right side of the page R

Draw 2 horizontal lines

Draw the first line ½ an inch from the Bottomof the page

Draw the second line ½ an inch from the Topof the page

Draw 2 vertical lines

Draw the first line ½ an inch from the Leftside of the page

Draw the second line ½ an inch from the Right sideof the page

 

Create a Drawing

STEP 2

With your pencil make dots

-Make a dot in the center of your page, equidistant from the horizontal and vertical lines you drew

Make 8 dots on the horizontal line [next to the label T]

Make 5 dots on the horizontal line [next to the label B]

Make 7 dots on the vertical line [next to the label L]

Make 3 dots on the vertical line [next to the label R]

STEP 3

Draw:

Draw a line (without your ruler) from:

*DO NOT LIFT YOUR PENCIL BETWEEN MOVING FROM DOT TO DOT

2^nd dot next to label T to 3^rd dot next to label R

 =2T to 6R

  4^th dot next to label B to 8^th dot next to label T

=4B to 8T

  3L to halfway between 3B and 4B

Draw a line from your current point to the dot in the center

 Draw a semi-circle from the center and loop through any three dots in on the lines

–5B to 3R

–connect the first dot on the horizontal line on the Top zig zag to an odd dot directly opposite on the Bottom and from that connect it to an even dot directly opposite it on the vertical line. Repeat this process until the painting is finished.

-If you’ve reached this point the painting is finished.

 

One instruction that I initially left ambiguous is the last instruction that says “Repeat this process until the painting is finished”. This instruction is my form of a loop but one that takes into consideration the artist. For normal loops one, or at least a computer, would continue repeating the process until a specific set of parameters are met. As an artist, painting kind of seems like a loop, except for me I never seem to know when to stop. A drawing or painting in my mind is never really finished and so when creating this ‘loop’ I wanted the artist to decided when they thought the drawing was finished, or if they would continue forever. Below is a series of drawing. The first is a drawing a created myself based off of my own instructions. The next three are the drawings I gave out for other people to complete. What I found interesting about the resulting pieces is how each individual interpreted different instructions. I made two initially random instructions. First, I didn’t  dictate where on the lines the people following the instructions would have to place their dots which meant that no matter what the lines made by different artists would never meet or be the same. Second, in one instruction I allowed the artist to connect the dots they selected to any other they selected. This was another way to intentionally generate randomness. One instruction that I found particularly interesting was the zigzagging from one dot to the next. In one painting the person choice to make zigzags, mini ones all the way to the next dot. It’s always things like this that you can’t really anticipate but also serve to create really unique and interesting pieces. That piece was my favorite because it was so unexpected.

My Drawing following the instructions I made

 

First Person to follow my instructions Second Person to follow my instructions Third Person to follow my instructions. My favorite.

Instructions:
1: Draw one of the following (Square, circle, triangle, heart)
2: draw another one, overlapping the first . The same shape cannot overlap itself.
3: repeat step 2 until you run out of room or get bored .

I didn’t exactly have an end result in mind when I gave this to people to do, I just wanted to see what happened. When left to their own devices, there is no consistency in what any of my participants did. One of them decided to stop when they got bored; the other two went until they ran out of space. Two of them generated shapes randomly, the third made theirs into some kind of fractal, probably because they’re a math major and that’s how they roll. Pretty much all of them asked if shapes had to overlap/if a shape could be completely inside another shape or if it had to cross lines with another, so probably I would include some clarification in the instructions of that. I also varied the subjects (one writing major, one engineer, and one math) so I could see how different types of people interpreted the instructions.