Sub-conscious sketching: Vastu Shilpa Consultants share drawings made with pen, pencil and paint

Rajeev Kathpalia

A sculptor examines the rock he has to carve. He seeks the veins that flow through the stone so that his chisel respects the structure inherent within it. In his minds eye there is a maelstrom of possibilities. But the idea he seeks to express comes before he has even chosen the stone.

How did the idea come? Is it a rational definable process? The process of etching marks on paper, scratching its surface, sets up a connection between the ether in which ideas flow, we call it intuition. The hand is guided, the mind, the conveyer of rational thought, helps read in these emerging strokes of pencil or pen on paper the ideas that we wish to convey. Sketches, doodles are this process. Revelations perhaps, incomplete revelations, evolving revelations…

Even though I have been part of this strange phenomenon over and over again, it still remains an inexplicable mystery. The joy of repeating it does not diminish. The energy of being an instrument a medium replenishes me.

The aesthetic quality, the size and the clarity of the sketch is unimportant. It is the meaning we read into it that is important. The eye acknowledges, scale, proportion, size, shape and form but most importantly it establishes relationships. There are obvious relationships to what exists in and around and then there are relationships through time where again intuition guides us. The evolution of soils, the folds of the land, the flows of water upon it, the changing of seasons and the climate that shapes human culture. As you query the sketch more details are revealed though often they are not obvious.

The series of sketches attached are not comprehensive or complete but show sequentially the evolution of a large campus from its first sketch and concerns, to the now under construction campus.

Khushnu Panthaki Hoof

Sketching for me happens when I am consciously absent from the act. The eyes and bodily experiences take over the mind and logic; inscribing memories of scale, proportion, rhythm and light deep within. I feel I begin to register more than what the eyes see, this subconscious assimilation further starts to become a point of reference in my work.

Sönke Hoof

Sketching is a search, an exploration of places, which your lines might reach before your mind. Soft pencils or charcoal aid this search with ambiguity in which ideas and meaning can be found.