Operarte

The Metalpoint drawings in the Opera section were created for a series of performances with the Underground Opera Company. For each of 20 well-known arias the relevant image projected on a large backdrop – which can be anything from a stage screen, rock wall or even a cliff face! Each aria commences with a blank canvas and the drawing develops in synchrony with the music. The time-lapsed images are completed as the last notes are played.   

The videos were made using “stop-motion” photography, a technique pioneered in the 1930’s. With a ceiling-mounted camera, around 1000 separate photos were taken every ten to fifteen seconds as the drawing progressed from blank paper to the final image.

Because any movement would cause the image to jump, everything had to be fixed in place: the art paper was taped to a drawing board screwed in place on a drafting table, which in turn was bolted to the studio floor and to the wall. This created some unexpected challenges - one of which was that I was unable to turn the original to obtain the correct drawing angle: a vital consideration if you are drawing with a razor-sharp metal stylus on paper. The only solution was to draw these images from the sides and upside down as well as in the usual manner. It took somewhere between 800,000 to 1.6 million stylus strokes to complete each drawing, so this project became a mammoth undertaking that took almost 2 years to complete.