Large Scale John Cage Drawing

The main project for Experimental Drawing was inspired by John cage. The beginning of the project was similar to the rock painting the class did beforehand. In smaller groups, we were given a grid to make a specific mark in each box. The rolls of the dice determined what medium, mark and how many times to make the mark in our piece. This piece was based on chance from the rolling of the dice which made everyone's piece differ from one another. 

After we finished our piece, we had a group critique about if our pieces looked completed or not finished. Some pieces looked incomplete and they did not look unified. The next step in the project was for everyone to put their pieces in one big pile and we switched with someone else so we did not have our original art piece. Our objective was to add onto our new piece given to us and make it look complete. We also had to roll the dice again to see how much we had to cover our new piece with gesso (white paint). 

The next section of the project was for everyone to flip our pieces face down so we could not see them and we made 10 points and we needed to connect them and then cut our pieces. We then put all of our pieces into a pile except a few cutouts that we keep four our new pieces. We took turns grabbing pieces from the big pile full of everyone's work until there was no more pieces left. We also had graphite pieces mixed in that we also cut up. The next part of the project was to tape the pieces that we picked out together still face down so we could not see. When we were done taping our pieces, we flipped it over so we could see and our objective was to bring the piece together so it looked complete. 

I personally had a lot of trouble with this project because I thought it was difficult to stay true to the original artist and apply your work to their piece. I felt like I was taking out too much when in reality I took out too little and I had to go back to my piece again to make it feel like a complete work of art. What I learned from this project was to be more bold and trust myself more as an artist to produce quality artwork. 

Original Piece

First attempt at editing:

Final Piece