In 1785 Alexander Cozens published a pamphlet entitled "A new method of assisting the invention in drawing original compositions of landscape". In this pamphlet Cozens presented a technique called "blotting" and a series of smudged ink on paper drawings.

Among several motos there's one by Shakespeare that capture my imagination:

'Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish; A steam sometime like a bear or lion, A tower'd citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory, With trees upon't, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air.'

His blot method, so he presumes, is an improvement on Leonardo da Vinci's old wall covered with dirt: "you may discover several things like landscapes, battles, clouds, uncommon attitudes, humorous faces, draperies, etc. Out of this confused mass of objects, the mind will furnished with abundance of designs and perfectly new subjects".

Cozens continues, "a blot is a production of chance", not random, "with a small degree of design. A true blot is an assemblage of dark shapes or masses made with ink upon a piece of paper, and likewise of light ones produced by the paper being left blank. All the shapes are rough and unmeaning, as they are formed with the swiftest hand."

The pamphlet gives us in the end 16 plates illustrating the blot technic and 2 more plates that fully illustrates the procedure.

In these series I'll use the 16 plates as seeds for my charcoal line drawing algorithm and trace these blots. While Cozens plates are mostly and essentially landscapes, they do contain 'secret' things to be discover, meanings within hidden just waiting to be found. Hope part of that secrets will be revealed in these algorithmic drawings.

Let us look for them.

Tiago Charters ・2023 ・cc-by-sa