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What is drawing? - The Open College of the Arts

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What is drawing?

This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date.
 
CaptureI wondered what would happen if I asked OCA art tutors this question. It might sound like a simple thing to ask, but the answers suggest drawing is anything but simple…..
Drawing and MA tutor Angela Rogers says: ‘A drawing can be a way of making your thinking concrete. A drawing can be a means to communicate something difficult to say in words. A drawing be a way to solve a problem of how things might fit into a space. A drawing can express your emotions. A drawing can edit out what isn’t important to look at. A drawing can make you feel connected to what you’re looking at. Making a drawing of something can reveal things that you had never noticed. Drawing with someone else may help you get to know them.
A drawing exists in its own right, it’s independent from the person who drew it and its subject. Drawings can look fragile and ephemeral but in the 20th century very few things survived the prisoner of war and concentration camps, drawings were one of them. Drawings can make people laugh whatever their language. I believe in the power of drawing.’
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Michelle Whiting, OCA tutor and assessor writes:
‘hand eye mind breath
Drawing might be the primacy of expression: of extracting oneself from the world and becoming absorbed in the very act. Drawing belongs to no-one, it can be achieved by anyone at any time. Drawing absorbs the time of making and as such it may be considered an act of memory.

Note: I use the word primacy here to evoke the hand of the small child who is suspended in a non-ordered state of writing and drawing where both are one and the same.’
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while OCA course writer, assessor and tutor Emma Drye says:
For me a drawing represents the most immediate and efficient relationship between the thought and the act. I think visually and physically and I make associations between my motor function and my other mental functioning. After many years I do this instinctively so that drawing frees my thinking and unlocks new associations and approaches. I can achieve something similar with walking or running but of course with no record whereas with drawing the process has the possibility of becoming reflexive and structured. I find drawing immensely pleasurable and have an easier relationship with it than I do with painting. I love painting but find that, unlike drawing, it can’t be squeezed into any shape, it needs a certain level of engagement and head space. When my daughter was newborn, I found I couldn’t paint but I could still draw.
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Finally OCA textiles practitioner and tutor Pat Hodson reflects:
‘For me a drawing is about searching for a solution; working out an idea, explaining a thought, visualising the memory of a feeling I had in seeing something in the environment. Time plays a part; An idea can change, evolve as I draw it out – often into a sequence of visuals – and I sometimes begin to understand how to develop it into something tangible. I continually recycle pattern and drawing fragments from the notebooks in which I collect these scribbles, often picking up a train of thought years later and following a new path.’
If you are making a reading list here are some interesting books I have come across which try to define drawing
The drawing book
Drawing Now
Atlas 4 (magazine)- beyond drawing – visual notes from working environments – Jake Tilson


Posted by author: Alison Churchill

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