José Quintanar

Making a drawing tool

Step 1

From a photograph I made a sequence of drawings of the building’s façade following the guidelines below.

• Draw lines using drawing rulers. A 20 cm graduated ruler. A template with circles of different diameters. A template of architectural elements. A ruler of irregular curves.
• The lines cannot touch each other.
• Lines are listed in the order they are drawn on the paper.
• A4 paper size.
• Edding marker, 1.5-3 mm.

Step 2

Drawing: I made 20 drawings. I keep one with 84 lines.

84 lines. 84 lengths. 84 times two connected points. 84 movements of the hand. 84 times a maker glides. 84 actions. 84 time frames. 84 snacks. 84 questions. 84 decisions. 84 answers. 84 doubts. 84 games. 84 reflections. 84 positions on a piece of paper. 84 territories. 84 marks. 84 identities. 84 signatures. 84 things in themselves. 84 characters. 84 traces.

Step 3

I scanned and digitized the drawing.

Step 4

Archive:

• 16 horizontal straight lines.
• 18 vertical straight lines.
• 6 straight lines with irregular angle.
• 3 curved lines in semicircles.
• 31 irregular curved lines.
• 6 rectangular closed lines.
• 4 closed lines in the form of an arched window.

Step 5

I built a drawing template using the archive of the 84 lines and used a transparent light blue acrylic, 2 mm thick and 18x41 cm in size. The lines within the template are of the same size as the original drawing. Scale 1:1.

The original drawing can never be viewed again, but it is still in the template. Any drawing made with this drawing template will represent the initial drawing in a hidden and coded way.