Little Big Men
Charcoal on Paper
2023
From a series of 100 hundred drawings called little big men
The little big men series was the start of my most recent journey into charcoal. I chose the large hirsute male body as my libidinal subject matter. I liked the idea of little drawings of big men. I collected images from the internet and used my phone as the reference that I drew from. The 9:16 aspect ratio of the phone screen became the same ratio I used for the drawings. A dialogue between the digital representation and the analog drawing material started to develop. The repetitive serial nature of the subject matter started to remind of a slow version of scrolling. I was spending hours of focused looking as opposed to seconds.
I stumbled upon a curious relationship between my drawing process and my phone. The image searches became enhanced by algorithms searches. I found myself compulsively scrolling through volumes of images, the result of my subject matter criteria. Choosing an image and slowing down my relationship to looking became an insight into my digital consumption of images.
What started as a genuine impulse to develop the techniques of drawing with charcoal had become a dialogue between analogue craft and digital streaming.
