GEOMETRIC vs ORGANIC DRAWING
In the same way that Geometric compositions starts outside, with the frame, and focus in, dividing space, a similar principal applies in Geometric draftsmanship---a view that focuses in, going from large to small, from the general to the specific.
Geometric draftsmanship begins with sketches of basic shapes---an oval for a head, a cylinder for the torso, etc---arranged proportionally, with the details filled in gradually.
How-to-Draw books always feature this method, deconstructing bodies into stick figures, making the production of masterpieces seem deceptively easy (“Hey look! The Mona Lisa is really just a pear!”). The goal is to standardize the drawing process, so one can repeat similar effects over and over again. You know what it’s supposed to look like ahead of time, with little or no variation.
Whereas composition in Geometric Art converges on a Focal Point, composition in Organic Art emerges from a Nodal Point, to which everything in the picture somehow refers, and upon which the composition is balanced, so that everything exists in a dynamic equilibrium, like a mobile hanging from its hinge.
In Organic Art, one “finds” the composition, in the sense that in a doodle, one might begin with the nose and add features until it becomes a face, as opposed to starting with an ellipse and dividing it into sections marking brow and jaw. A doodle whose character is influenced by the tools at ones disposal---pencil, pen, brush, mouse etc.
A doodle like the following, for instance, drawn on a laptop, using my finger, which immediately sets conditions for how the drawing will look:
I’ll start with the nose, because it’s in the middle of the face and helps me position the other features. The nose’s shape and size hints at what the rest of the face will look like.
Next I add an eye, which immediately becomes the Nodal Point, as eyes often do. For a Nodal Point is not necessarily the initial mark, it is the key mark. The reference mark.
With the eye as our Nodal Point, let’s give him a smile, some positive energy, but keep it subdued. A shy smile.
The face is shaping to be that of an older, heavier guy, so I’ll add a jowly jaw with a big ear for a target.
Now to top it off with a skull, add a hairline to thwart the Elmer Fudd effect, and there you have it, a real live doodle, or as I call it, an Organic Face.
The drawback to this method is that the drawing is difficult to recreate exactly. The advantage is that the resulting image is unique.
It was this same process that I used to draw Memories of Adolescence. Only this time, I doodled multiple faces revolving around the same Nodal Point. The blue faces on either side were drawn using the same organic technique, and then layered together via computer, adding dimensions within dimensions.
Like the preceding doodle, the image exists only in cyberspace, and so is a combination of the hand-drawn and machine made.
Whatever the aesthetic considerations of the work, however, it’s mainly a record of the feelings I had when I drew it with all the passion and pain of a 20 year old, modified by my calmer recollections a quarter century later. If I were to describe what the piece truly represents, I might be more apt to use words like frustrated, angry, horny, confused, and sad rather than Organic and Geometric.
Adolescent Memories by Rick Rodstrom
The same organic process is used to create an abstract composition. Where an eye might be the Nodal Point of a doodle, in an abstract painting, the Nodal Point is simply a mark on a plane. This mark may be anything, or it may not be rendered at all, except in the mind’s eye (for instance, in a circle, one needn’t see a bulls-eye to know where the center is).
A second mark is rendered, creating a relationship to the first that directs eye movement across the picture plane via principles of Direction, Speed and Weight. A third mark changes the equilibrium again, then a fourth, and so on, and so on.
Greenery by Rick Rodstrom