Note on the practice: Ten Minute Artist is about keeping an Artist Diary as a way to stay connected to our creativity in the present and through the years. To help you set up you diary I’ve created a FREE 5-day email course for you.
You can find Day 1, here.
Dear Artist Friend,
The root meaning of the word ‘draw’ is to pull, presumably to drag a material across a surface to make marks.
Separately the word draw would evolve into a completely distinct use for pull as in drawing water from a well. There is no connection between these two words. If there were a connection
It is purely a coincidence.
Yet in my mind, these two usages of the word drawing mean the same thing.
When I’m pulling my pencil across a sheet of paper that is almost a secondary action. The main action is trying to ‘draw’ or ‘pull’ from my mind an image that I’m trying to make tangible.
The image is there in my mind, not fully formed, but half visible, and drawing is this act of transferring, almost like teleporting a thing from inside my mind into the physical world.
Even wen drawing from life, it’s not from model to page, there is a refining process that happens inside the head, so it’s more like the image goes in the eye, gets frowned in the head, then comes out through this process of drawing.
In this reassuring we can aim for different things.
For example you can aim to represent every detail.
Or you can choose to try to represent the aliveness of a thing, you can try to capture the image in your head directly.
Creative Action
Draw from inside.
Pick an object near you. (Put it a way then try to draw it from memory.)
Bring it back into view, now draw it as you see it, but don’t just aim to draw static material aim to incorporate all the meaning and emotion that you accumulate to the thing.
Share it in the Diary Chat!
Your Artist Friend,
