Ladies

(8'x6') This one looks a lot like a vector drawing except that the lines feel better to me. The lines don't end in a hard square or rounded point and because the tape is ripped it feels more like a stroke from a chisel tip marker. The stylized line weight reminds me of 80's graphic design and the shapes are sort of Russian constructivist, especially the faces.

Birds

(8'x6') The great thing about tape is that I can massage the lines so they're just right. I lay down a line, stand back and look at it and decide if I want to do it again. Certain tapes are more forgiving than others but, generally, putting down long, flowing curves are perfect for this medium. The composition is based on a window display I saw in Paris last spring.

Africa

(8'x7') The first one. I adapted a portrait of a Burundian woman I had from a trip to the area because she had good lines on her face and good folds in her shirt and scarf. It was stream of consciousness and it took all night. Due to popular demand, the eye was removed from the composition. No one liked it but me.

How it all started

I first saw a tape drawing while I was working in the Saturn Studio at GM's Tech Center in Warren, MI. I was the design lead for a 3 person team tasked to develop a Saturn concept vehicle. My two colleagues, a sculptor and an engineer, sat together as we watched a veteran car designer draw a full scale car profile in tape. It was revelatory for me. I never considered drawing this way before. The car designers do it because it's a little bit more controllable than a white board. And it's physical. It requires your whole body.

They also do it because it's a great analog to running your hand along a real car. And it helps the designers and sculptors "negotiate" the 2-D form together before the full scale 3-D clay model gets sculpted. As the design evolves, the tape drawing reflects all the iterations on layer upon layer of vellum.

The first photo above is the pencil sketch of my concept car on vellum. The second photo is the 1/5 scale tape drawing I did as an enlargement of my pencil sketch. It is partially obscured by the clay model we built using the tape drawing. The third photo is the half-finished model next to the tape drawing.