CAEL1001 Chap.5 Addition and Erasure as Drawing Processes
Addition and Erasure as Drawing Processes
Week 5 reframes the eraser. Rather than seeing erasure as a correction, the unit explores it as a way of making that produces form, light, surface and meaning in its own right, and it extends that to memory, impermanence, identity and change, with a sand mandala as the reference for drawing as a temporary act of making.
You lay an even compressed charcoal ground, pull the light out with a kneadable eraser, push darks back in where the removal went too far, and refine with tissue and a cotton swab. Two exercises run on that ground: a subtractive self-portrait, where removal reveals, and a subtractive text piece, where removal writes.
The chapter separates those two logics, sets out what each removal tool actually does, and covers why the masking tape has to come off before anything is fixed.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Erasure reclassified from correction to technique
- 02
Why starting from black changes which decisions are expensive
- 03
The materials list, and eight ways to change a value on one sheet
- 04
The tape as a control strip, and the order that preserves it
- 05
Preparing a ground with no visible stroke direction
- 06
Kneadable eraser, standard eraser, tissue and swab compared
- 07
Removal that reveals against removal that writes
- 08
How many areas may reach the paper, decided in advance
- 09
Erasure as a subject: memory, impermanence and change
- 10
Choosing your own text, and why supplied text produces typography
- 11
Reading the two drawings as a pair rather than as a preference
Sequencing the removal tools for one highlight
- 1Kneadable eraser first, shaped to an edge, lifting the whole band to about two thirds brightness rather than to the paper.
- 1Cotton swab worked downwards only, moving charcoal rather than removing it, so the lower boundary becomes a gradient without the band getting lighter.
- 1Standard eraser last and only along the upper line, because it cuts the hardest edge available and anything done after it will soften it again.
Key terms
- Subtractive drawing
- Making an image by removing material from a prepared ground rather than by adding marks to blank paper.
- Charcoal ground
- An even layer of compressed charcoal rubbed flat across the whole sheet, prepared before any deliberate mark, so that light becomes the thing you have to work for.
- Kneadable eraser
- A malleable eraser that lifts charcoal without abrading the paper and can be shaped to a point or an edge. The main removal tool of the week.
- Layering
- Building depth and complexity by putting one mark, material or image on top of another. In this week it alternates with removal.
- Impermanence
- The idea that a work may be designed to change or disappear, so that its destruction is part of it rather than the end of it.
- Control strip
- The band of untouched paper revealed when masking tape is lifted, showing the sheet as it was before any work began.
Addition and Erasure as Drawing Processes FAQ
Why lay a ground at all instead of drawing normally?
Because it inverts what is expensive. On white paper dark is work and light is free; on a charcoal ground light is work and dark is free, so the highlights end up deliberately placed rather than left over. It also removes the blank page, which is the thing most people stall in front of.
How white should the brightest area be?
Decide before you start, because the kneadable eraser will take charcoal almost back to the paper and it is very satisfying. One or two areas at full strength is usually right; everything else should stop somewhere in the middle of the range you calibrated in the light and tone week.
Does the text have to mean something to me?
It helps. The unit asks you to bring a short poem, quotation or phrase, and the exercise is about rhythm, repetition and scale, which only become interesting decisions when you know what the words are doing. A phrase chosen at random on the day usually produces a typography exercise instead.
What should the pair of drawings be compared on?
Anything except which one you prefer. Available comparisons include the technical, since one ground and one toolkit produced a tonal register and a linear one; the conceptual, since absence means something different in each; and the procedural, since whichever you made second is visibly more confident.
Assessment move
Prepare the ground properly and rub it flat, since an uneven ground competes with every light shape you later remove. Photograph each stage, because the intermediate states in a subtractive drawing are frequently stronger than the resolved one and you cannot get them back. Decide before you begin whether this sheet is revealing or writing, because a drawing that does both usually does neither.
Lift the tape before any fixative touches the sheet. This is the last technique week before the presentation, so use the rubric reminder the unit posts here and start laying out everything you have made since week 1.
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