We draw to see, to imagine the world, to solve problems, and anything else we can imagine. Different methods of drawing affect not only what the drawings we make look like but also how they function, different tools affect the way we see problems and come to solutions. I’m going to examine different drawing tools in the context of drawing as a preliminary process, utilized when building an object, this applies to art, design, architectural contexts, and so on. Drawing is arguably the most important step, as when it is utilized it shapes everything which comes after it, even when deviation from the initial idea occurs. We will be looking at the relatively old fashioned method of drawing with analog tools, and the now near ubiquitous digital tools used to make these drawings. That is to say, pencil, pen, etc. on paper, compared with CAD programs on computers.
These two subsets of tools shape the way we approach these preliminary drawings in different ways, just as all tools since the first ones have shaped interaction with the world. Joseph Weizenbaum, an MIT professor, gives us a useful way to think about how tools “have direct effects on the imaginations of individuals who use them”(19). He sees some tools as functional additions to the human body, which affect the way that these individuals interact with the world. A clear example of one of these additions is the car, a tool which fundamentally changes the ability of your body, making it bigger and faster, and changing the ways you can interact with the world. Similarly, analog and digital drawing tools each give us the ability to conceptualize ever more complex constructions, but in different ways, each tool comes with its own point of view that shapes the outcome of the drawing, the next tools which are used to execute the drawings, and the resulting object. Maybe in this analogy you could compare the car to the bike as two additions which aid in transportation, but offer the user two very different perspectives.
In addition to simply the different perspectives, an examination of the differences between these two tools is all the more warranted because over the last 50 odd years digital drawing has supplanted analog drawing as the dominant medium for this application, so I think it is worth considering the difference in the perspective of each method and how they might benefit each other. If we understand the differences, we can make better decisions about how to employ each tool.
Sam Jacob, an architect and co-founder of the now defunct architecture firm FAT, examines these differences primarily as they relate to architectural renderings of yet to be constructed buildings in a 2017 article for metropolis. He critiques the various digital tools commonly used by contemporary architects as limiting, saying “They position us within a predetermined idea of space, an array of pre- programmed presets rather than an ambiguous possibility that can be constructed.”(Jacob) Jacob finds that the role of drawing as something exploratory has diminished in the face of the CAD programs featured on the last slide. He says of photo realistic renderings, that they are a predetermined depiction of reality he hopes to challenge. Jacob remains optimistic, and speaks on his strategies, and those of others, for finding the ambiguous possibility in a digital environment. He sees a wave of architects, including himself, figuring out how to make digital drawings which embrace an analog ambiguity and which are exploratory in nature. Drawings which do not attempt to literally depict reality as many CAD software packages attempt to. Jacob’s digital drawings embrace an analog perspective. For Jacob, paper may be infinitely malleable and unconstrained by cartesian coordinates, but the computer screen shares that trait, even if within it many CAD packages don’t. Further, He sees analog drawing on paper as inherently closed off from the world, whereas digital drawing on a screen is inherently connected to the world. For Jacob this only serves to heighten the malleability of the digital environment because digital drawing is in proximity to all the world’s knowledge, and if allowed that knowledge can seep in.
Jacob approaches his examination of digital and analog drawing by way of preliminary rendering of what the object might look like and argues that we have lost and should look to regain ambiguity in our drawings. Lars Spuybroek is another architect who in his book, The Sympathy of Things, among many other topics, approaches this analog digital dichotomy by looking at the ways in which these different preliminary drawings are then realized as objects. He explains the reason for digital drawing’s lack of ambiguity, noting the same difference Jacob does. Analog drawings of the past were descriptive in nature, ambiguous, whereas the digital drawings of the present are prescriptive, pre-determined. The reason, Spuybroek explains, for this difference is that analog descriptive drawings are executed in the hands of craftspeople, who have the ability to interpret a descriptive drawing, and use their perspective to make changes or mistakes when constructing the described object. Digital drawings tend to be prescriptive in nature because often it is not a craftsperson who is executing the drawing, but a machine without the ability to interpret, and will follow the instructions of the drawing to the letter. Because of this the person making the drawing and the craftsperson coalesce into the same being. Spuybroek sees computers as “a conflation of design and work […] a computer is not a machine that replaces hand-drawing or handicraft; it is handicraft taking place at the level of drawing and design.” (34) In this way It is not in the nature of digital drawings to be descriptive or ambiguous.
Both Jacob and Spuybroek have an appreciation for analog drawing, or rather, the analog perspective that allows for ambiguity. Neither of them argue though for a return to pencil and paper. Spuybroek goes so far as to call the notion of the hands primacy over computing absurd in reference to another architect who begins their projects with pencil sketches. I haven’t delved completely into Spuybroek’s thoughts on this subject here, mainly because of time and their breadth, but suffice to say that his argument boils down to a complete embrace of an ambiguous, or changeful/savage in his words, digital drawing/craft, and a casting off of hand drawing as a slow and outmoded process. I think though that this assertion of absurdity, and Jacob’s underappreciation of pencil and paper is a misstep, I’d like to assert that drawing strictly by hand is of importance and can lead us down many wonderful paths.
Though my thoughts on this matter have not quite settled, I’d like to look to Wendell Castle as an example of someone who retained an appreciation of hand drawing as they began to utilize digital drawing tools, and digital manufacturing processes. Castle began his career before the advent of CAD software, and lived through its proliferation. He took to digital fabrication late in his career, but hand drawing, and hand modeling remained core to his process. I think that there is so much value in hand drawing, I think we should all draw more, with pencils and paper.
Weizenbaum, Joseph. Computer Power and Human Reason From Judgement to Calculation. W.H. Freeman and Company, 1976
Jacob, Sam. “Architecture Enters the Age of Post-Digital Drawing” metropolismag.com, March 21, 2017 https://metropolismag.com/projects/architecture-enters-age-post-digital-drawing/
Spuybroek Lars, The Sympathy of Things Ruskin and the Ecology of Design Revised and Expanded Edition. Bloomsbury Academic, 2016