Sound

I took myself to a local park for this observation exercise. At first I drew whatever sound I heard on paper and was surprised to find that I captured what appeared to be the different qualities attributed to sound, such as the type of sound and where it was coming from in respect to where I was sitting. You can see this in the top left image. My pencil pressed lighter on sounds that appeared soothing and pressed harder on sounds that were harsh or had sharp intonations. The lines were different depending on the type of sound and seemed to generate some sort of sound “map”. I then focused on the sound of the wind because it was soothing to me. I captured the sound of a gust wind (e.g., top right) and also a breeze that passed through the trees and made the leaves whistle (e.g., bottom left). The gust of wind featured messy yet semi-circular lines and the breeze featured hash lines that seemed to follow a broken path.

In the same park, I moved to a different location and observed isolated sounds. The baseball diamond (image on the bottom right), featured a sound that was sharp and hollow and I used vertical lines to show this. The sound also seems to weaken over time. This is shown by the descending and shorter vertical lines. I also honed in on the sound of crows. I have negative feelings towards crows and in some ways this was captured in my drawing (e.g., image on the middle left). This drawing featured harsh triangular pyramids that are angled and sharp.

Both the “Sound” and “Breathing” drawing exercises made me think of the way Impressionist artists used different lines, thickness of paint and brushstrokes to show the quality of what they were observing.