Picasso Light Drawings

After exploring different  line drawing techniques, such as continuous line drawing with biro and line drawing with wire, I immediately saw the relevance of Picasso's light-drawings to my project. His fascination with light and line were combined in 1949 when Life Magazine photographer visited Picasso in his home in the South of France. Here is his story:

Renowned LIFE photographer Gjon Mili, a technical genius and lighting innovator, visited Pablo Picasso in the South of France in 1949. Mili showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates, jumping in the dark -- and Picasso's lively mind began to race. This series of photographs, since known as Picasso's "light drawings," were made with a small flashlight or "light pencil" in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created. However, while the "Picasso draws a centaur in the air" photo is rightly celebrated and famous, many of the images in this gallery are far less well-known -- and equally thrilling.

"Picasso" LIFE magazine reported at the time, "gave Mili 15 minutes to try one experiment. He was so fascinated by the result that he posed for five sessions, projecting 30 drawings of centaurs, bulls, Greek profiles and his signature. Mili took his photographs in a darkened room, using two cameras, one for side view, another for front view. By leaving the shutters open, he caught the light streaks swirling through space." "By setting off a 1/10,000-second strobe light, [Mili] caught Picasso's intense, agile figure as it flailed away at the drawings," LIFE reported.

Although the light-drawings I created in response to Picasso's are not directly related to the subsequent the direction of my project, experimenting and playing with different kinds of line has really helped me identify techniques of mark making that I enjoy using and that effectively and successfully express certain characteristics. Moreover, I was able to link this diversion in my project back to my exploration of self portraiture as using light and a camera with long exposure, I distorted my facial features in order to create a strange, alien, subverted portrait. Next in my project, I would like to return back to structured drawing and detailed drawing in order to create a completely different type of image - a detailed line drawing using a grid structure will juxtapose effectively with these light drawings and illustrate my thought process.