Animated drawing

Artists @ Work week 2 and 3:

I switched my focus the last two weeks of the residency from “crowd drawings”  to an animation project, based on the process used by South African artist William Kentridge. I’m animating a song lyric, 4 minutes in length, and this 19 second sequence is about half of the second stanza. It’s like a “rough draft” that allowed me to experiment with the process.

Draw mountain valley, “click”…

I layered multiple drawings and erasures on the same sheet of paper, usually making incremental changes that I photographed at each stage. After 6 days, I had 103 images viewed at 3 frames/second for the train sequence.

Draw gray smudge, "click"...

Enlarge gray smudge, "click"

Use eraser to make white rocks fly from smudge, "click"

It may be fortuitous coincidence, synchronicity, or divine intervention, but the public component of this residency turned my little project into a truly collaborative work. These guys wandered into the Arts Center and shared their knowledge: artist Bill Shumway, animator Matthew Coffin,  film editor Paul Ahrens, and Chris Gray, single-gauge railroad aficionado.