A DRAWING A DAY FOR A YEAR, WEEK TWO

So far, so good. I have made drawings every day since January 1. Somehow making the pledge in public cyberspace seems to be cementing the promise to myself and I am enjoying the discipline. I hope anyone reading is also giving this a try. To draw something is to show your understanding and there simply is not enough drawing done in the course of a traditional education. One does not need to be a great artist to draw; one simply needs to draw.

Drawing is a way of thinking, it’s visual note taking; it helps us to remember. Drawing is communication. Drawing is emoting. Drawing is necessary and essential.

Let’s keep drawing.

“Drawing” on other subjects, my holiday break is ending. I return to teaching this week with a drawing and painting class at Kettering College, followed by a new semester of art history at Wright State. Time off is wonderful but routine is pretty good too and it’s time to fall back into the rhythm. I am also returning to work on some of my collage series: a new tapestry is underway, another in the Redefining Wall series is on my easel in its beginning stages, and I think I finally have a handle on how to create the new series called Half the Sky. And right now I am sitting here watching the ice flows on the river and flocks of birds enjoying the sunshine…

Hope your sun shines bright as well. 

THE DAO OF DRAWING

So I have been listening to The Great Courses while in my car and am currently learning about the Daodejing, subtitled The Dao of Life and Spontaneity. The book is generally credited to a person known as “old master” though most scholars believe it comes from a variety of sources. The Daodejing, interestingly enough, is the most frequently translated book in the world!

The meaning of the word dao is usually translated as “way” although it is sometimes translated as discourse or discussion and there are other meanings as well. Mostly though it seems that “way” is the most common understanding.

As I listened to my audio teacher, I thought of drawing, and the phrase “dao of drawing” came to mind. What is the way of drawing? In Daoist thought one pays attention to the empty spaces, the background before the foreground, to what is not there. From that negative space the positive emerges.

Now admittedly this is just a tiny tiny piece of Daoism; the philosophy as a whole is much more complex. As I consider the idea of drawing as dao, a way, a discourse, the thought of approaching one’s drawing practice as first noting the empty spaces then allowing the forms to emerge from those spaces intrigues me. After all, it is a common drawing exercise to set up a series of forms and instruct students to draw the negative space rather than the objects themselves. This certainly points to a “Dao of drawing”.

Perhaps if one followed that practice more often when making marks one might see new and enlightening things. Who knows?