Drawing summer school - day 3

Combining meditation with drawing, today's tutor was Jane Sassienie, who along with Tania has set up Drawing Breath.

Drawing provides a focus, a place to drop anchor. Giving time and space to the drawing is giving time and space to yourself. Drawing is a unique physical and mental activity that allows creative absorption, which appears to slow time down. Drawing allows for different ways to communicate, celebrate, be curious, and see the beauty of small things in ways that help us live and endure. Drawing Breath is an invitation to anyone, at any level. 

With mindful breathing we return consciously to our breath where we can experience a coming home into our body that is safe, solid and grounded. From this centred place we have more courage to take a leap. There are many different breathing patterns that give us access to hidden parts of ourselves, and new ways of understanding others. The exploration is endless and as simple as breathing.

Take a breath 

Make a mark

Which is what we did....

First, a lovely surprise - it was a delight to see the supplies table so tidy, clean, organised -

Those supply tables can get so chaotic. (A metaphor for life, wot?)

After a discussion of "what is practice" and thinking about breathing, we breathed in and out in various ways (I was initially resistant, but shouldn't/needn't have been). The first drawing exercise was to put a pool of ink, mixed with washing-up liquid in hope of bubbles,  onto paper and blow through a straw to move it around

In chronological order

 "Allowing the drawing" - oh how various. They went up on the wall.

Then  we made marks each time we inhaled and exhaled, first with usual breathing and then with a focused breathing

Each mark a new breath 0

Many different responses ...

I wasn't the only one who felt resistant to the next exercise, performative drawing (check out Sam Winston). But on we went! We worked in pairs, one (blindfolded) acting as "brush" - holding the drawing material - and the other moving the brush, ie being the artist, deciding what marks to make.

 Interesting. The brush could go along with the artist, or be awkward through not being held right, or provide gentle suggestions of improvements, or just plain be resistant.

 And as artist - my goodness, what sort of mark to make? How to break out of making the same one over and over? When to change medium? Where to move the brush to next? How to make decisions while grappling with using the brush?

 It certainly provoked discussion.

Back to observational drawing - with a sigh of relief. Reunited with my friend the basil plant ... different media (always hoping to find the perfect all-purpose medium)

Carbon paper gives a different quality of mark -
and leaves a whiteness in the blue

Ink - the scary medium! The blobs are
a happy accident

 People were getting into using their little notebooks (given to us at the start) not just for notes but for small versions of the drawing that went on - "Let me be the brush while you draw my plant" -

From my notebook -

Ugly scary inky marks, drawn with several breaths

Small version of the big line drawing, on newsprint alas,
that needs a dark background because my lines are so faint