MMU Learning the way of The Line

The day started with a lecture of slides showing various artists who are known for their interpretation of drawing. The drawing I refer to is that of a linear nature, which includes artists such as Tim Knowles and Hannah Barton.

Trees Drawing - Tim Knowles

Cassette Tapes - Hannah Barton

 The lectures broke us in, and after a break and another short slideshow we were introduced to what's known as "drawing with our bodies"... which I get, I just don't quite find - what's the word - as substantial in terms of instant appreciation? Well, to be honest, I'm split on this one. There's a part of me that is yelling "PRETENTIOUS" down one of my ears and another part of me that's got his hand perused on his chin, nodding as he's taking it all in.

Suffice to say, the techniques worked, and I was feeling rather open and calm today. Even if I was rather "oh, really? C'mon, really?" but, letting it soak in, I see the effects and I appreciate the philosophy and the thought process in the exercises.
Said exercises go like this:

1. Close your eyes
2. Imagine yourself in bed on the edge of sleep last night

Or perhaps like this:

1. Close your eyes
2. Drink a cup of water veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooooooooooooooooooowly
3. (or do some everyday task veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooooooooooooooooooowly)

Then there's this:

1. Close your eyes
2. Have a partner stand in front of you
3. Now air molest them - I mean trace their outline and stuff... you know, for art purposes. Feel that line, that's right, feeeeel iiiiiiitttt.

 Like I said, these activities did at first appear pointless (much to the reactions I got from people in the same room afterwards) but they do have a psychological effect that helps alter the mood to help with creative thinking. It is possible to find joy in simply drawing lines over and over, much like the clerk who copied letters all day long in Gogol's "The Overcoat".

The idea of scrawling my signature over and over on a piece of paper has been done before in one of my sketchbooks, but looking at it from a larger piece of paper, with more attention to the type of line making I used with charcol puts a different light on it.

Squiggle Squiggle!

Amongst the things we tried was also zen like drawing of lines, one after the other, again and again and again and again... You kinda get into it and start to enjoy the joy of just drawing a line - a bit like racers who enjoy getting a corner turn just right. It's an exercise inspired by the likes of... an artist I would try to name if I had been quicker taking notes in the lecture *sigh* [As a note to any teachers, would it be a possiblity of getting a copy of the slide shows you all make? I'm finding a couple of artists don't seem to have an online presence, if anyone could let me know of a possibility before I come find you about it sometime this week it would be greatly appreciated :) ].

Line... line... line... line... line... LINELINELINELINELINELINELINELINE line... line... line...

  We even tried a technique of never looking at the drawing. As in, the entire time our eyes focused on the object that we were drawing, so we would have to draw an image blind, but based on the movements of our eyes, a so called "record of the journey of our eyes". Again, I'm split on this. On the one hand I respect and appreciate the concept; it's a nice idea to linking your eyes and hands in a different manner and really makes you focus on key elements of drawing rather than bogging yourself down on if the drawing is alike to the object. However, on the other, all I see is a very lateral take on drawing, but if all I end up with are very indistinct squiggles that don't really appeal to the/my eye then forget about it.

Yes. They are shoes.

Thankfully, we got a wonderful finale that involved just letting us draw the shoe (from own feet I might add). It was all to incorporate all that we had learnt during the day, the zoning techniques, the zen line drawings, the squiggling of signature over and over and the 100% focus on object drawings. All were amalgamated into this still life of one of our shoes. The results are rather satisfying:

SHOES!