Assignment #1
I am recreating Plate 35, the image of two species of insects, Asilus abdominalis and Acanthomera immanis (flies), that appeared in The Naturalist’s Library: Introduction to Entomology, Vol. I. This was written by James Duncan, a Scottish entomologist, and is part of a larger collection of works edited by Sottish naturalist Sir William Jardine. This volume is intended for scholars of natural history, as it contains a description of the anatomy, physiology, and classification of insects written with scientific jargon. The image was created by English entomologist-artist John Westwood and then etched onto a metal plate by Scottish engraver W. H. Lizars and turned into a colored image. A variety of media may have been used to produce the various images, such as colored ink, colored wax, paper, and parchment. As long as the copper plate was undamaged, identical paper copies could be produced.
Due to lack of access to copper plate and an engraver pen, I will recreate the image digitally, with tracing paper, and etching a wood fiber server plate. The three different modalities will replicate the process of translating a specimen into lines on paper, copying the image exactly, and mimic the etching process, which are the three general processes involved with creating the original image. My perception of the original image, however, has been altered from the moment I received the paper copy and found the digital image, as both are subjected to the properties of the technology that reproduced them, the laptop and the copier.
Field Notes
FIELD NOTE 1 OF 3
Date: 2/14/2020
People Involved: Myself (Annie)
Location: Fondren study room #437
Reconstruction conditions: A beautiful sunny day, blue skies without a cloud in sight. I’m with my friend from Wiess, Virginia, who is working on a presentation for an anthropology class. The window is open and there’s soft midafternoon lighting falling onto the table.
Time and duration of reconstruction:
Approx. 2 hours, 4 PM to 6 PM
Equipment and tools used:
iPad and apple pencil, the app Procreate, iPad charger and outlet.
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
Every surface of the sparsely furnished study room was white colored and the sunlight coming from the window added an extra almost luminescent element. The surface of my iPad felt silky smooth and very different from the slight graininess of the thick sketching paper I usually use. My iPad is also the slightly smaller 10.5 in so the edge of my hand pressed into the edge of the tablet, putting unfamiliar but not painful pressure on my drawing hand. The apple pencil felt smooth and slippery in my grip and the tip was slightly dented, limiting the range of motions my charcoal pencils usually granted me.
I was slightly frustrated recreating the piece because it seemed like the artist had made half-hearted attempts at creating depth and shadow. The nuances of color and shade were not fully realized; the insect appeared lifelike but upon closer inspection became rather flat. The pale red-brown color added an interesting depth to the recreating. I found the original image in The Naturalist’s Library and was surprised to discover that it was in full color and the photocopy had muted the majority of the colors.
I haven’t drawn in quite a few years. I took lessons from age 9 to 18, and while I was a good artist, my intense focus on perfectionism made me more focused on the end product rather than the process of translating the world I see onto a flat paper. This time, I focused on the process and found myself enjoying making art like I did as a child again. The mistakes I made were not indicative of my poor skills but rather my interpretation of reality. I chose which elements of the piece I wanted to focus on more, so I spent most of my time on the body, some on the wings, and quickly sketched the outline of the legs.
Prior knowledge that you have:
Based on my very vague memories of freshman biology, insects have very organized and symmetrical bodies, which lends itself to artistic reproduction very nicely. One of the first things I was taught to do when starting a new piece that is “realistic” in nature, which I defined very generally as not abstract art, was to plan out size and position. As you can tell from the video, it took me a bit to remember this, but then I drew some vertical and horizontal lines in an attempt to map out the major separations in the piece, such as between the three sections of the body. Instead of attempting to isolate and recreate the lines of the subject, I tend to focus on the negative space in order to account for proportions and placement. For example, instead of drawing two lines for the legs, I look at the space in between and the shape it creates- a triangle may separate one leg from another and I focus on that shape.
This was the first time I had ever used my iPad to draw, as I feel more in control of my work with pencil and eraser in hand. The electronic version compared favorably to the pencil; I was able to control the darkness and thickness of the lines with the pressure of my hand as well as angle my apple pencil to shade. I struggled with the eraser function, however, as slight pressure failed to fully erase but exerting more resulted in a larger area of the drawing completely disappearing.
Reflection on your practice:
I realized that I missed drawing a lot. I’ve always enjoyed doing photorealistic art, but now that I am actively focusing on my senses through the process, I realized that it still entailed a certain degree of freedom. It did not matter so much that the image looked exactly like real life, but rather that it “looked like” whatever I was recreating to myself and other people. Although I did not include some small details, either because I misjudged the shape and space and was unable to fit it in or because I simply grew tired, it still looked like the bug and therefore I had fulfilled my objective.
The app Procreate was an incredibly way of leveling the playing field for aspiring artists. It was able to mimic a variety of mediums, from charcoal to color pencil to water color. It is yet another way to represent the world. The influencing factors increase with the increased mechanization, however. The quality of the tip affected the apps sensitivity to pressure differences and the pencil and iPad generations influenced the resolution of the resulting product.
Photos/video documenting process:
Questions that arise:
What does the actual organism look like and how does it compare to this drawing? I was unable to find the species noted online, likely indicating changes and adaptations in the classification of flies and of living things in general from 1840 to today. But looking at photographs of flies, they appear far more complicated than the image indicates. How was the subject viewed? Was there even a reference specimen at all? Given the proximity of the artist to the insect, he may not have been able to see the tiny hairs all over its body or the various ways it deviated from the relatively smooth lines drawn. Perhaps there wasn’t a physical reference and just the artist’s memory or instructions based on the memories of the naturalist that discovered the insect. In that case, does the occupations of the engraver and artist affect the final product? Westwood was an entomologist and artist while Lizarse was just an engraver. Does knowledge about the anatomy and physiology of the bugs enhance Westwood’s drawing, as it did for Sir Charles Bell? Brendan and Chiara explored how Bell considered the anatomical understanding of nerves to enhance the artist’s depiction of emotion (127). If it were possible to isolate Westwood’s work from Lizarse’s, the discrepancies may provide an understanding of how deeper knowledge of the subject relates to its presentation.
In Barwich’s article, she argues that smelling should be transformed from an objected oriented modality to a process perspective, as so many particularities such as memory and concentration of the object can affect perception of smell. Should sight also be thought of as a process? While I was recreating the drawing, I noticed that the things I included and emphasized in my drawing was very particular. I tend to focus on the details and lose focus of the big picture, both in my art and in life, so although I had been actively training myself to map out the contours of the bug and the divisions between larger structures, my first instinct was to start on a small part of the drawing and add details, resulting in some problems with the overall shape and lines that I had to erase. Color-blindness exists and there is always the question of whether we innately see the same colors or we have been socially conditioned to associate a certain object with a color?
Field Notes
FIELD NOTE 2 OF 3
Date: 2/15/2020
People Involved: Myself (Annie)
Location: McMurtry commons
Reconstruction conditions: It’s a cloudy day but the commons has floor to ceiling windows around its entirety so there’s an abundant amount of natural light (so different from Lovett commons!). I am working with Lily and Andrew from class. Lily is writing her field notes while Andrew is tracing besides me. There are a few other people in commons.
Time and duration of reconstruction: approx. 1 hour, 1-2 PM
Equipment and tools used:
Tracing paper, Prismacolors, mechanical pencil, and eraser
Laptop to lean phone against to record
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
About 30 minutes in, I felt my arms beginning to hurt. This time I did not feel the same sense of meditative calm that I did yesterday because I was in a hurry to finish so I no longer had to raise my arms in that position. Although the tracing paper made it a lot easier and quicker to define the structure of the bug and represented the shape more accurately than free-handing, the tracing paper muted the colors of the image and the subtleties in shading. The product turned out a lot less colorful and 3- dimensional than the previous attempt.
Prior knowledge that you have:
I have never actually used a lightbox or tracing paper before, as I am somewhat artistically talented so I prefer free-handing for school assignments.
Reflection on your practice:
I felt like I was much more restricted compared to the previous attempt; physically because my hand was tired and it determined how much time and care I spent on the recreation. Tracing the image turned the process into a more mindless task because I was not able to actively make decisions on the shape, the size, what details to include and exclude. However it did feel like I was able to provide a more accurate rendering of the original image since I could trace every mark on the paper.
Photos/video documenting process:
Questions that arise:
Should we classify senses and sensations not just based on their modality, but also their relative relation to the actual subject of the sense? In this case, if a naturalist were to observe the insect while trekking in the outdoors and describes what he sees to the artist, who recreates it based on what he hears, the subject (the insect) has been transmitted through sight to sound to physical touch. Does this chain of sensation affect the final product? Perhaps one way to answer this would be to recreate the image through various chains of modalities and compare the final products. Isolation of the factors to just the modality, however, is impossible- could the environmental conditions, the emotions of the creator, etc. all play a role in the final product? To me this points to the idea of “objectivity” as undefinable and unachievable. Rather than attempting to eliminate “subjectivity,” which is often described as social, political, and economic biases or physical limitations of the creator, we should think about subjectivity/objectivity as a cause and effect and eliminate the influences that do not align with the purpose of the project, rather than attempt to eliminate all influence. In Mechanical Objectivity, Daston and Galison defined mechanical objectivity as the attempt to “repress the willful intervention of the artist-author” and instead “move nature to the page through a strict protocol” (121). Could a new definition of objectivity perhaps focus on the second part of their statement and abandon the first; define it as a uniform protocol rather than the removal of influence?
FIELD NOTE 3 OF 3
Date: 2/15/2020
People Involved: Myself (Annie)
Location: McMurtry Commons
Reconstruction conditions: The sun has set so the commons are now predominantly lit artificially. Andrew is working on editing his videos next to me, Lily has gone back to her dorm. There is even less people in commons now, two others besides Andrew and I.
Time and duration of reconstruction: About 20 min, 5:50 to 6:10 PM
Equipment and tools used: Servery plate and screwdriver,
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
Like the previous session, this recreation was physically uncomfortable because the screwdriver was attached to a pen so the clip was digging into my hand the entire time. The noise of the screwdriver on the plate was grating and unpleasant, and as there were other people in the server, I attempted to etch quickly. The grain of the plate made it rather difficult to etch precise lines, so I had to apply pressure and go over the lines several times. I had no way of correcting lines, so I resorting to etching the correct lines next to incorrect ones and making them darker in the hopes that viewers would focus on the more prominent lines.
Prior knowledge that you have:
I have no experience working in 3D, not even with sculpting. I have also never seen etching done on video or in person, so while I can guess at the basic motions- like drawing but pressing down harder- I do not know how to cover up any stray marks or mistakes.
Reflection on your practice:
Originally I had planned to etch on a piece of cardboard with a pair of scissors but after experimenting I found that the marks created were too faint and the scissors were bulky and hard to manipulate. I saw that Andrew was using his screwdriver to etch one of the server plates and decided to adopt his materials and technique. This medium was the most limiting; there were many details that I did not include because they would not show up on the wood. The only way to show shading and depth was to scribble distinct lines. To use this medium I also had to invert the color scheme; black lines on the original picture now became white-yellow lines on the wood of the plate. It was interesting that although I had changed a major component of the piece, it was still recognizable to my brain.
Photos/video documenting process:
Questions that arise:
Are metaphors enough? What exactly do we mean by a metaphor when it comes to our senses? Etching on a wood fiber plate was much more difficult than the mediums I tried previously and as a result there were many finer details that I did not include, but the basic structure, the segmented body, the six legs, and the wings clearly denoted an insect of some kind. Even if I had spent more time and energy adding the finer details such as the hairs on its body, the overall effect would remain the same. Perhaps Melzack and Wall’s gate theory of sensation that Li cited in her paper on acupuncture anesthesia is enough- it provides a general metaphor for an otherwise unexplainable phenomena. Perhaps the metaphor of the “average brain” cannot encompass every peculiarity of mankind, but the existence of the bare bones, of something to compare individuals to, can provide the first step towards understanding those individualities.
