Black and White Drawing (1976)

• 84%
• 1976
• David Haxton

Black and White Drawing is about the two dimensionality of the film frame and the illusion of three dimensionality created by drawing. A sheet of gray paper is placed on the floor front of the camera. The film switches to negative: the paper is now darker, a different shade of gray. Haxton sketches in with "black" chalk black areas in wavy lines and goes over and over them, making them more solid. He leaves the frame. There is a cut to positive image: the chalk draws along the first areas, uniting them into a single shape that looks somewhat like a twig or a tuning fork with one short leg which appears at first to be equal in length to the other. Haxton uses the conventions of shading as "shadow" to make the white areas look like volumetric or perspectival extensions of the black: the drawing seems very object like.