Visual studies.
Artwork made for this site, rendered in the browser.
These visual studies are part of the website’s design: a ballpoint line down the margin, a brush-like circle and bamboo, and a face traced as one spiral.
Each mark appears in sequence. The linework records its own construction, from the first stroke to the last. These are the studies the pages are drawn from.
Bamboo, in vermilion
Su Shi, the story goes, once painted bamboo in red ink. Someone asked: is there such a thing as red bamboo? He asked back: is there such a thing as black bamboo? Culm, joints, branches, leaves, in the order they are painted; never the same stalk twice.
The circle
One breath, one stroke. The brush lands hard, runs dry on the way round, and leaves the circle open. Each take faces a different way.
The way
Twelve strokes in the order a hand writes them: 首 first, then, after a breath, the walking radical — its long sweep last and slowest.
A face, as one line
A single spiral from the rim to a point, after Claude Mellan’s engraving The Sudarium of Saint Veronica (1649). There is no shading: the dark is only the line growing thicker.