I’ve had a lot of emails forwarded from The Drawing Research Network this week: the topic is “drawing exercises”, and several suggestions have been quite interesting. I liked one suggestion which treated the drawing of a simple line almost as a meditation, although when I tried it it seemed a bit ordinary. Probably needs to be done v e r y s l o w l y on a large piece of paper.
During a recent workshop with Sandy Sykes at the Regional Print Centre in Wrexham we did a series of warm-up exercises which, although somewhat off the wall, produced some intriguing results. Starting with sheets of paper loosely assembled into book format, we drew under instruction: first a simple shape, “make it bigger, make it smaller, turn the page, give it some socks” (really!) “wash the socks, give it some friends” and so on and so on until the book was full. The idea was to use the drawings as a basis for what might be called free-form print making.The results were varied, interesting and entertaining.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=93656&id=432…
I don’t know whether the whole exercise would be very popular with a class of intensely serious science students, but I think something similar would be worth considering. It’s important to loosen up physically and focus mentally if you’re going to get any proper work done. However, bitter experience suggests that a lot of hobby artists don’t like preparatory excercises. I’m not sure why. I wonder if they consider it distracting from the real business of producing a “proper drawing” that they can sign & date, and show to their friends.
