Drawing Centers

As I mentioned before I took some time to draw centers … and it was a fascinating practice. I tried to capture some of it, though to fully experience it I invite you to do it on your own.

Milford Graves (<– link will open in a new tab in case you wish to listen while reading) guided me through this exercise 🙂

This is the source (from the book) I started with:I had already spent time reading about the pattern and following Alexander’s guidance in how to look at it (seeking centers, local symmetry, etc.)  … and I gave it a first try:

I then went at it a second time and paused to scan each step on the way. It starts with a dot on a piece of paper that starts to unfold and increase with life:

I did step 2 already in my first try, but step 3 was a big aha moment for me. In my first try I went directly to the “black hearts” that are attached to the small protrusions, but I did not know how to size them properly so that there would be room for the thickness of the white heart itself. When I looked at the image some more the 4 diagonal lines suddenly popped out … and they made the next steps simple and steady and peaceful:

The diagonals created clear fields from which the hearts appeared. That transition in step 3 became like a switch that came on and stayed on. I found simplicity and clarity in the black spaces. Instead of trying to draw the white spaces that I was seeing by default I switched to seeking the black spaces.

I was being held and guided by the black spaces, yet something in me wanted to “do the hearts” … but I stuck with the black

… until it felt necessary to draw the top heart as it lead into the evolution of the pattern at the top

… and the top part appeared with ease, easier than my first attempt to “draw it” … and closer to the original.

… the rest of the hearts followed naturally and swept down … and then it felt that a base was needed … and the spaces that formed between the base and the heart-flower already started to glow with the horizontally oriented patters of the base … and again black guided:

… two small black triangles … and fill it all in:

I’ve pulled together the source and my two attempts for comparison:

The second attempt was easier and more peaceful and I now know and remember it in a very different way – not so much as an image but rather as a sequence of steps in which centers come into being. I feel that if I spent more time and more iterations with it, I could refine the sequence … a recipe, narrative, story … a pattern that underlies the visual image. I may already be able to draw it again without having to look at the source image.

The second attempt is also closer to the source, better balanced, fuller, more stable. This is especially clear if you look at the top and bottom patterns. In the first attempt I tried to draw the actual white shapes (at the top and bottom) which is very tricky because my eyes registered one thing “the white space” but because it has thickness two lines need to be drawn to create that space. In the second attempt I created the black spaces and the white-spaces were simply left over.

In both attempts I did not get the proportions of the heart-flower correct: the hearts were too big in relation to the actual center.

I decided to go ahead and try the second pattern (for the first time). When I first looked at it, there seemed to be a spacing challenge. Then I realized that the top pattern (which I had already learned) created the overall rhythm … and so I started with it:

and then started traveling down … again following a clear path of black spaces.

… and that’s when those wrong proportions of the heart-flower really surfaced. Step 20 should have brought me way further down. I had to correct, in step 21,  by stretching what should have been squares into longer rectangles.

This is just one example of many, how a slight change in one element resonates strongly through the entire wholeness. Millimeters differences can have a drastic effect on this image which is ~9cm by 7 cm. This also demonstrated the idea of “character” – like in the four images of Matisse – despite variations caused by my perception and drawing, the overall pattern (if I got the centers right) persists.

Here the sequence started to become less clear to me. I feel that I still have not discovered the right sequence of centers for this second pattern … still black spaces guided me well:

… and once again the original for reference

… this felt fundamental … like learning to walk …