Embrace insignificance

It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn't be called "normal" matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the universe. If you take these statistics as facts and add to them the issue that like most of my peers, I enjoy the illusion that everyone cares about what I am doing; you have a paradox. The conundrum being that self consciousness works in such a way that it causes me to believe that I am very important. This makes it hard to even think about how insignificant I actually am and makes me respond immediately to any situation that tends to suggest I am actually doing something of significance. Therefore I don't just 'like' likes on social media, or in everyday exchanges with others, I can begin to crave for them. 
I have in an earlier post pointed to the research done by professor Yi Zhou, who discovered that, "just one standard deviation increase in narcissism, (size of an artist's signature) increased the market price of a work by an average of 16%, and increased the auction house estimates by about 19%". A fact that further reinforces the feeling that if we are not seen to be significant players, if we don't believe in ourselves, we are literally 'worthless'. 
This situation can reinforce in the majority of us a feeling of low self-esteem, whereby our self conscious selves are torn between the reality of insignificance and the illusion of seeking some sort of fame or recognition for what we do. I would argue this is where drawing can be really useful. It allows us to embrace insignificance and use it to communicate to others how wonderful the world is. As we do this, it can also help us to get past those desires for affirmation from our peers. 

I have already looked at how drawing can be used to help develop a state of mindfulness. Five posts were put up that were designed to be worked through one after the other, as a way to achieve some sort of harmony with the world, but you do need to dedicate a fair amount of time to the suggested activities if you are to get any benefit from those posts. This post is an attempt to look at the issue of mindfulness in another way. 

Anonymous (late 15th century) St Jerome in Penitence, after Antonio Pollaiuolo  

Estimated sale price £80

I think the print above is really fascinating. You have an actual landscape, represented by ships and a harbour entrance brought together with an imaginary scene from the bible, of St. Jerome in a desert wilderness. The two spaces, real and imaginary, being pushed one against the other, with no attempt to suggest. gradual change. Various scales of representation are used within the same image, size constancy being more to do with importance than perspectival spatial location. The invention of graphic signs for things such as grass or water or hair, is a very important aspect of the image's texture and again there is little attempt to account for differences in foreground and background texture. Powerful gestures are used to highlight the emotional state of the main character; St Jerome's distress, is echoed in the figure of the crucified Christ and the lions fighting. Compositionally everything revolves around the figure on the cross, its strong vertical stabilising the visual rotation. You can spend quite some time with this image and the longer you do the more you can sink down into its self enclosed world, a world with its own laws, but ones that the more you engage with them, constantly reveal new possibilities. 
The fact that we don't know who the artist is does no harm to any appreciation of the image, in fact it helps us to see past the 'great artist' barrier. I used to teach engraving on copper plate and so I am also very aware of the craft behind the making of the plate from which this image was printed. The 14th century German theologian Meister Eckhart stated, “When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it.” You can step into this image and become fused with Saint Jerome and his desert experience, you can get lost in the various ways that the artist has built this image, an image that slowly engraves itself into memory; its formal impossibilities making the mythic possible; kneeling in the company of lions, being no more difficult than sailing the seas or reading a book.
There is a rhythm to the work of engraving, as you rock and twist the graver, a rhythm is built into the spacing and arrangement of the lines that are cut; look carefully at the angled marks that are clustered together in order to make tonal patches and you will be able to imagine the plate engraver pushing the graver over and over again into the copper, until enough lines have been cut to hold the ink that creates its dark patches. Cutting an engraving is hard work and in order to have the necessary level of control, years of practice are needed. In looking closely at the print, gradually the ghost of the engraver emerges, we feel the presence of its making, each line a frozen action, each image a thought form. A human being is affecting us from a distance, this small piece of paper holding within it something of great spiritual worth, of far more value than the £80 it was put on sale for. 

A long time ago I was awarded an art prize at school and I asked for and received for the prize a book on Indian Painting. In that book I learned that the compositional structure of certain paintings was based on how ragas were composed in Indian classical music. This opened a doorway for me that I have ever been grateful for and since that time I have had a fascination with Indian Art and have realised over time that it has many other doorways into understanding the world, perhaps even more so, than Western art forms.

In the 17th Century in Rajasthan abstract Tantric paintings were made in response to certain religious texts. Painting was at this time and place regarded as a meditation exercise and once made these abstract images were often given as gifts. Their function was to help others also meditate. In this respect they could be seen as operating in a similar way to the icon, except they didn't need to be housed in or sanctified by the church, or they could be looked at in comparison the the work of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, who worked hard herself to develop a body of work that could be used as a doorway into spirituality.  

Hilma af Klint's notebook

These images below are all taken from the publication 'Tantra Song - Tantric Painting from Rajasthan' and they are both beautiful and yet rather insignificant in their modesty. We will never know the names of the people who made them, and the people who made them would not expect anyone to acknowledge them. They are gifts to the world, small fragments of meditation on paper, made by people who were mystics rather than artists, people who embraced their insignificance and offered their thoughts on paper as a courtesy to others.

17th Century Rajasthan Tantric paintings

Hopefully this introduction to the work of Tantric artists will inspire and help contextualise an alternative way of thinking about art, especially for those of you who have worried about the meaning of your work and whether or not it can effect change. Anonymity is not the same as uselessness, your quiet meditations and small drawings may for others be an entry into something wonderful. 

See also: 

Indian aesthetics
Uncertain certainty
Drawing and spirituality 
Artist's signatures
Abstraction, mathematics, metaphor and creation
The anonymous drawing project

Drawing and Mindfulness: Part four: A Material Conversation

Sohan Qadri

If I had to pick out one artist that would be an example for any of us that wish to take the drawing and mindfulness approach onto a further level, it would be Sohan Qadri. He used to approach his work in a way that was very similar to a ritual or religious experience. Qadri was influenced by both Tantric-Vajrayan yogi practices and Sufi mysticism.  He developed his spiritual ideals through meditation, dance and music, eventually deciding to focus his art making on the potential inherent in the properties of paper. Qadri worked with heavyweight papers that gave him the opportunity to engage with his paper's structural and surface textural potential. In particular by soaking it and carving into it in several stages, and by applying inks and dyes between each stage, he was able to attune himself to the paper's properties. In the process, paper was transformed from a two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional medium, or thin sculpture. In particular he developed controlled rhythmic ways of marking the papers, often using a careful repetition of incisions into the paper as he meditated. Each layer of marks would be followed by another layer of intense colour wash, the inks and dyes soaking into the newly disturbed paper creating powerful saturations and glowing surfaces of colour, that grew even more intense as each colour layer was absorbed into the surface below. Layer after layer of colour would be applied, each application regarded as if it was a paper's ritual bath of colour immersion. Qadri worked for many years, looking for a way to shape an art practice that would be an effortless method of creation perfectly in tune with his yogic practices. By respecting the crafting of paper, and by then furthering his awareness of that craft by engaging at an intense level with the fibrous nature of his material, he developed a way of working that was in total harmony with his paper's inception. 

Sohan Qadri

Before embarking on this next stage you will need to make a decision as to whether or not to make your own paper. If you have access to the right resources this can be a very useful thing to do because you will develop a deeper understanding of your paper's nature and it will help you to become engaged with it's materiality. There are lots of resources on 'You Tube' and the university has resources and technicians that will advise you on how to do this. If you want to begin with ready made paper, that's also fine, but you may need to spend more time exploring the surface properties of your paper in order to develop an understanding of its nature and how it can be worked with. See older posts on paper to get an idea of the possible range of papers to use. 

You will need to use colour in order to reveal the changes you make to the paper, and colour will need to be applied between every stage of your paper transformation, so you will also need to experiment with dyes and inks and explore the way they effect your chosen paper. 

Once you feel confident that you understand your paper, you need to familiarise yourself with the tools you will work with to make marks into it as well as the applicators for your dyes and inks.

Your paper marking tools and colour applicators will be vital to you. The process of making these tools can itself be part of the mind letting go, by gathering up objects and transforming them into tools for marking paper, you begin to see the world from the point of view of inter-object relationships. Perhaps as you take apart an old cheese grater and fit handles to its various parts, this activity might take you into thinking about your hand and how it holds things, of the sharpness of the different surfaces of the grater, of the potential for these surfaces to be used as scratching tools for roughening up your paper. (Typically you will make or find scratching tools, but also sandpapers, incising implements, polishing things and embossing tools) We have looked at making your own tools before.

The development of an organised almost ritual approach is going to be vital and you will need to embody or materialise your thoughts as part of this process. 

You will need to begin with at least 20 sheets of your chosen paper.

Take your first sheet of paper and position it in a portrait relationship with yourself. It may be lying on the ground in front of you or on your table. You need to see it as a whole. It is like you bilaterally symmetrical, the right half mirrors the left half. Meditate on this for a while, what does it mean to you? Are there any 'off centred' aspects that you might want to think about? Are you left sided or right sided? 

Now make a mark on the paper. Just one. But be as inventive as you can about how you make this mark. Look at the paper and feel for how this mark has effected your awareness of the the rest of the paper. What are its qualities, where is it? Is this mark nearer the top, or closer to one side or the other? Now put the paper to one side and make another mark on a new sheet of paper. Do this carefully and each time try to vary the quality of the mark and positioning. Carry on until 19 sheets of paper have a mark and one is left unmarked. As you make each mark, feel for how it relates to your own body, does that mark down on the left relate to your left foot, if so what does it feel like?

Now take up the first sheet again and make a line down the centre of the paper that represents your own awareness of the fact you have a backbone. Is this a single incised line, is it composed of several short marks that visually appear to become a line when seen from a distance? Once the first line is made, pass on to the next sheet and the next until you have made 18 different vertical lines. These can be lines made by pushing pins through the paper, dragging a compass point across the paper surface, incising with an empty biro, drawing with your fingernail, scraping with a knife or scratching with your cheese grater tool. 

Once you have made these lines paint a colour selected from your dye mix across the first one and spread this colour right to the edges of the paper. Now look at what you have done and let your mind wander into it. 

Do this with 17 of the sheets.

Put the papers aside and begin the same process on the first sheet once again, make a mark, look at how this changes the relationships set out between what you have done already. Then once you have done this with 16 sheets, move on and make another vertical line on 15 sheets. 

Now paint your dye across 14 of these sheets. 

Put these images in a row and look at them, what is happening, look at the difference between a mark that has had only one covering of dye and the others with two, compare the white sheet with dyed sheets.

Take 13 sheets. Look at your two lines on the first sheet and in your minds eye thicken one. It will become a rectangle, perhaps a long thin one, or if it expands out to the edge of the paper a much more regular rectangular shape. Now make the rectangle you see by building a surface of regular marks. These could be horizontal or vertical scratches, regular punch holes, overlapping hammered marks, regular scratchings from your cheese grater. What ever you can do to make a continuous surface that stops at 4 straight edges. 

Paint a dye over 12 of these sheets of paper. 

Take 11 sheets and look at what has happened to your other line. Is it lost under the rectangle you have made, does it stand clear, can you still see part of it? Make another line designed to reinforce awareness of this line. Do you make a shattered disjointed line next to a clear sharp line, or do you echo it by making another sharp line but how far away should it go? Once you have made these 11 new lines, paint the dye over 10 of your sheets of paper. 

Now lay out all 20 sheets, look at them closely. You have in effect been playing with a particular variation of Paul Klee's idea of moving 'from point to line to plane'. However by adding colour you have included a very emotional ingredient to the sequence that will hopefully ensure that this is not a cerebral exercise. The fact that only changes in the paper surface are used to capture changes in colour intensity should also make you far more aware of the paper as a material, rather than as a background on which to work.

As you look at the sheets you have worked on hopefully one will stand out as being of interest in some way, you will be drawn to one of the sheets for whatever reason. Take it out of the presentation, look at it for a little longer and add a fold to the structure. Work on the back of the paper to ensure the fold is sharp then flatten out the paper and fold the paper again in the opposite direction. Then flatten back out. Now paint your dye over the whole surface. 

Pick another sheet of paper from your remaining sheets and look at this. Now cover a proportion of the surface with a sheet of thick clear paper. Whatever is left uncovered lightly sand with rough sandpaper, or scratch over with a set of regular marks. Now paint your dye over the whole surface. 

Take another sheet. This time close your eyes and feel with your hand over the surface. With your eyes still closed take a sharp implement and scratch into the surface feeling for the difference you are making. Now look at what you have done and dye the paper surface. 

Take another sheet and do nothing to it. Now take a different coloured dye and paint it all over the surface.

Take out another sheet. Using a bowl of clean water and a rag wipe away as much dye/colour as you can from one area of the sheet of paper. 

On another sheet make a straight line one inch wide from one side of the image to another. This can be an any angle. Make the line in anyway you want, it can be dyed, scratched into, embossed, whatever you feel is right.

On the next sheet make a square anywhere on the paper in any way you wish using any of the techniques already used to mark the paper. 

Now take a sheet and make a tear into it. 

Take another sheet and make another tear, this time you are to dye the sheet once the tear is made.

Draw a circle into the next sheet of paper using any of the paper marking techniques you have been using. 

Now lay out all of your sheets of paper again, look at them and think about how they might relate to yourself. This is a very personal thing and how you make the connection is up to you, remember there is no right or wrong way to do this. 

Pick one sheet, close you eyes and feel it, follow the lines and surfaces with your fingers and build up a picture in your head. Now look at it from a distance, and feel for the differences between sight and touch. Now decide how to respond to what you have felt or seen or both by making either a mark, a series of marks, a line or a shape.  You could work on this sheet with eyes closed, by working whilst looking very hard, or alternating between looking and feeling. Use any combination of the techniques you have introduced. 

Pick another sheet and reinforce one element by painting into it with a different coloured dye. 

Pick another sheet and do the same but this time using the dominant coloured dye found on the chosen sheet. In effect this would be blue on blue or red on red, a heightening of saturation or intensity. 

On another sheet remove a large area of information by sanding or any other appropriate erasure technique.

On the next sheet to do the same thing but this time to erase within a sharp boundary. Such as working within a taped out boundary or using a clean sheet of paper to mask out the area you are working in. 

Repeat this process on two more sheets and then apply dye across both sheets. 

Finally, choose a sheet and simply dye the edges, letting the colour fade out into the existing colour field.  

At this point it is time to stop. Go back reflect on these images and see what has happened. 

The next stage is up to you. 

You will now have a much better understanding of your chosen paper. Do you move on to explore a different sort? Are there any sets of marks or forms that particularly intrigued you? Do you begin the next exploration by starting with these? Do you begin this time with a square sheet of paper rather than a rectangle? Do you use tearing techniques alone? What if all your marks were punched into the paper? What is it about the colour that works for you? How would you approach dyeing paper if you had to do this again? What if all your marks were confined to one half of the paper? 

The next stage will be about focus and it is your decision as to what that is. 

Sohan Qadri

Drawing and mindfulness: part one

Drawing and mindfulness: part two

Drawing and mindfulness: part three

Drawing and mindfulness: part five

Sohan Qadri's work in relation to communication theory

Sohan Qadri in Venice 

Drawing in or with paper

More thoughts on paper

How paper is made in Nepal

Drawing and Mindfulness: Part Three: Making a drawing

Once you have begun to feel your body responding to your looking, then you are ready to begin using some drawing materials.

I would suggest that you chose one wet and one dry material to start with. So much will of course depend on time available, if you are doing this all day, you might work using ink and brush in the morning and charcoal in the afternoon, but if pressed for time, ink for the first session and charcoal for the next one on another day. All materials require quite different ways of working with them and you need to find which ones you are more sensitive to. By comparing and contrasting materials you also begin the process of absorbing your mind and body into the materiality of your drawing tools. Material thinking is a vital part of this process. 

You have hopefully already chosen what to draw with and are aware that every drawing material is different. Getting to know a chalk and how different it is to natural charcoal and how this differs from compressed charcoal and how that differs to a graphite stick or a soft pencil can only be grasped by exploring these materials and finding out how they operate on different surfaces. This takes time. Hopefully you took time to explore your materials as was suggested in the first exercises related to preparation. Then what you were doing in the previous exercise was making sure that as you look your whole body follows the looking and we need to make sure that as you draw with your art materials the same happens. Instead of walking, climbing or running into the spaces you see, you will make gestural responses and these responses are recorded as the chalk rubs off onto the paper or the pen or brush leaves behind its traces of ink. The point being that this aspect of drawing should not really be any different from walking, climbing or running into the spaces you see, simply a natural extension of what you are attuned to do everyday of your life. 

Before you get to make any marks you need to become attuned to your body again. Your body is the conduit between what you experience of the world and your awareness of your body as the thing doing the experiencing. In order to make sure you accept this paradox, (i. e. you can't really step outside your body to think about this or any other situation) you will need to go through some of the exercises that were introduced in the last post, this time as a way to warm up before drawing and to ensure you are tuned back into body sensitivity.  You need to be aware that what you are doing is both of the world and a channel for experiencing the world. Imagine your whole body as a very delicate seismograph. 

Begin by standing tall and slightly rocking your body, feel how quickly your toes transfer energy to your heels and how your knees begin to take the strain as the rocking motion begins to flow through the body. Move your hips and feel how the movement opens out diagonal and curvature possibilities. Begin to rotate shoulder muscles and get a feel for how rhythmic variation can be brought into your movements and then before you begin to think about your arms and your wrists and hands, begin to incorporate breathing into your movements. Try breathing from your diaphragm, from the bottom of your lungs and begin to slowly synchronise simple body movements with breathing control. Once you begin getting a feel for the connection between breathing and moving then flex your shoulders and begin moving your arms. Stretch them, see how far you can reach, how big a circle can you make, step backwards move again and feel for how far away you are from your drawing's surface and from your subject. Now add in elbow movements, wrist movements and finally finger moves. 



Now begin to look at your subject in more detail. Try and mime the shape of what you are looking at. Feel for it with your body, think into a space as if you could drive into it, mentally feel over a surface as if you had to climb over it, but don't draw anything yet. 


Think big and small, think grand movements and gestures as well a tiny ones. Let your body decide which parts would be needed if you were to dance these over and between objects movements. You are trying to embody the information you have seen by echoing aspects of what is seen with corresponding parts of your body being moved. Seeing involves moving your eyes, so that the things you see are being scanned by you, you are therefore active in the seeing.  Moving is therefore central to both how seeing works and in order to see. It is a process and a system. In this case you don't just move your eyes and head as you follow the ping pong of visual action, you are engaging all of your body. 


Now go back to your toes. Tense them up, tense up your heel muscles and relax. Add in an awareness of your calf muscles, tense them and relax them. Work up your body, knees, thighs, hips, stomach, back, neck, shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, fingers and then breath calmly from the diaphragm and relax again. Hold out the arm you are going to draw with, open your hand and feel for how steady it is. Are you mentally shaking or are you steady? 

At this stage observation and its recording is a much better way of dissolving ourselves into the world than by producing drawings that concentrate on mark making or the construction of abstract figures such as spiral or circles, because it forces us to concentrate on looking at the world, thus forging a relationship between you and the world and as you do so you begin to forget that you are you, and slowly as you look, you in effect become immersed in what you are observing, (the subject) and what you are drawing, and in this immersion you tacitly absorb the concept of material thinking.

Touch will be the opening to your feeling tone, it will be part of the material language that you will be using. Seeing and touching, feeling and observing, they will be your guides as to what you will draw, try not to think. 

You can now begin to draw.


Take up whatever drawing material you have and feel confident that you are going to find even more out about what properties this material has, by applying it to the task in hand, which is to make a drawing that reflects how you are seeing something. The tracing or recording of observation is going to be at the core of achieving this. 

Begin the process of working between looking and drawing. Look and scan, what interests you? Can you 'see' an overall shape for this interest? Look at your paper, is it the right shape for this interest? Change it if not and reattach to its support. Begin to set out the most significant visual interest. (It doesn't matter what this is, it might be a strong abstract composition, it might be that one tiny part of the subject seems to have a vitality that says "draw me first"), your sensitivity will be central to the feeling tone of the image you are making. 

Keep that body awareness going that you worked so had to achieve. Feel for the marks through your body. Step back and mime a way of being with what you have observed and then apply the marks to the paper. Think about how you are holding your drawing implement. Can you hold it in different way? Is the way you are holding your brush, stick of charcoal etc. a way that allows you to have complete control over the marks made? Do you need to change the way you hold your drawing implement each time you make a different type of mark set? 

Begin to fold yourself into the rhythm of looking and drawing, look at the subject, hold the looking in your body, reverse your movements, now look at the drawing, rehearse the movements of drawing and then make the movements a reality by applying your material to the paper surface. This backwards and forwards rhythm lasts as long as it needs to last. Some people can do this all day, others will do this in short spells, it is up to the person doing the drawing, there is no right way. 

Once you begin to feel you are not looking any more, then it's time to stop. 

Now look at the drawing you have made. At this point you either stop and the drawing becomes a record of the eye/body/material dance made so far, or you can take the drawing on to a further stage.

Ask yourself, does the drawing already seem to state something about the experience of looking? Just do this by intuition, you don't need to analyse anything. 

For some people this first stage is enough, but for others it isn't. The second stage is about awareness of the drawing as a thing in itself. It is not just a record of the looking at a subject, it is also a coming into being of a thing with its own life. This 'life' can be fed and nurtured if the drawer is attuned to it as a possibility. 

So now is the time to spend more time looking at the drawing that has been done. You might begin to think of essences: can it be stripped down to what is essential? You might find yourself thinking about rhythm and structure. Can the rhythmic structures that are evolving within this drawing be reinforced? Does that small but vital thing that you saw really operate as the 'punctum' for your image? Does it need repositioning or reinforcing in some way? Are the implications of the materials used being responded to well enough? Do you need to spend more time developing your own material sensibility within this drawing? A dialogue now begins between yourself and the drawing, a backwards and forwards no less intense than the initial one that was set up between yourself, the subject and the drawing. 

Again the amount of time you devote to this is up to you, it could last for days or be something that just lasts for 10 minutes. 

Once again there will be the need for you to stop and look and feel. Is this new drawing beginning to strike a chord with you in some way? If so you could stop. If not it may be worth moving on to another stage. 

The final stage is that of returning to the beginning. Go back and look at the subject, do you see it any differently now? Mime to the differences. Look across at the drawing, can you break back into it? Can you get it to accept what you have just seen in the subject but which isn't in the drawing? Carry these things in your body, feel for the changes you need to make. Make sure you have touched the right body rhythm/drawn rhythm. If not rebuild it. You are like a choreographer and dancer fused into one. At the same time as dancing you are making a special type of dance notation, your drawing is a score for other dancers and well as a record of your own moves. 

Again it is up to you when you stop. 

It is fine to end the process at any point, each decision will result in a different type of drawing and once again your own sensibility is vital to what this is going to be. It needs to 'feel' right. Feeling tone is far more important at this stage than any form of analytical unpicking. 

You can repeat the process over and over again, or run through variations whereby at times you always keep the initial pure visual responses and at others you always move on and work back into the drawings trying to give them a life of their own. 

Once you are happy with this approach it may be that you will want to move on to a further stage, but it takes time to assimilate the needs of your body and your materials, so I would suggest not trying to move on for a few weeks. 

Drawing and Mindfulness: Part one: preparation

Drawing and Mindfulness: Part two: drawing before drawing

Drawing and mindfulness: part four: Material Conversations
Drawing and mindfulness: Part five: Finding yourself

Drawing and Mindfulness: Part one: Preparation

Georgio Morandi: Still Life

I'm very aware that drawing as a window into mindfulness is something I have been having to address more and more at the moment. So perhaps it is time for me to put my thoughts down about this. There is a particular mental and physical conjunction that is required in order to make a drawing that helps you to achieve such a state; however as a name, 'mindfulness' when using drawing as a way towards some sort of mind/body awareness, is for myself the wrong term. 'Mindfulness' suggests that you want to achieve some sort of awareness of the mind and how it works, the word suggests that you need to become 'full of mind' and in actual fact, the opposite is the case. The mind needs to be emptied into the body and drawing is a wonderful way to do this, but it takes time and practice. So in this case what I am suggesting is that if you want to achieve what I would call ‘mindemptyness’, a ‘mindmeld’ or a ‘mindvoid’, you could follow the exercises I will be suggesting over the course of the next few posts.  

There are several stages that you need to move through in order to use drawing as a tool to help you embody a ‘flighty’ mind and to balance the mind body relationship. I have therefore decided to break the subject down, so that if you want to follow the process, you can do this in a measured way and not be tempted to rush. Like most things, if you slow down and take one step at a time, you will eventually feel the benefit of deeper knowledge and in the process calm down and become de-stressed. Think of how calm and still the Morandi still life drawing is above. It is stripped down to its essence and nothing is superfluous. The drawing seems to echo a state of mind and this is what eventually I would hope anyone can achieve by applying themselves to some not too hard to learn approaches to drawing. 

Preparing to draw

The subject. What to wear, where to do it, lighting, choosing papers, materials to draw with and your supports such as tables, easels or donkeys. 

There will always be a certain amount of preparation required before you begin drawing, and how much will be up to you. At its most basic you can simply decide to go with what and where you are now, just grab the nearest pencil and drawing pad and just draw what is in front of you and there is nothing wrong with that, but you may want to think it through in more detail, I offer you both options. 

Choosing a subject. 

The reality is that everything is interesting. Those artists that you meet that are always looking for inspiration or the ‘right’ subject matter are I firmly believe deluded, and its not what it is but how its looked at that is important. A drawing by Van Gogh is instilled with his energetic looking, whether it’s a brick wall he is looking at, a starry sky or a wheat field. Therefore your subject just needs to be something that allows you time to look at it. This is the vital element, ‘time’. For instance if you want to draw the dog it may be one of those dogs that never stops moving, therefore you will need very fast responses to capture anything useful, so I would suggest if you are a beginner to this sort of drawing, selecting something that is much slower moving, such as a still life situation or a view through a window, or architecture. Nothing is ever totally static, but everything has its own timeframe, a rock is much slower than a human being, which is faster than many plants, but slower than a mayfly. In many ways your subject will be how to capture a series of time bound relationships. 

What to wear?

You do need to be comfortable, and when we come to looking at what you will need to do, one important issue will be balance, so this means either to go barefoot or to wear comfortable shoes that help you stand for as long as possible. You will need to stretch and bend, so think of clothes that you would wear if you were to go to Tai Chi or contact improvisation dance classes. You can do this anywhere, inside or outside, so adjust clothing in relation to temperature and never wear anything that you don’t want to get dirty. 

Lighting 

Lighting is always an important factor; the quality, intensity, angle and direction of light will effect what you see and you can either control this to the nth degree or respond to whatever lighting conditions you find. For instance you might want to light your subject from one side, thus giving more focus on shadow and the way light can model form. Some life classes have hanging lights that enable the drawer to light their paper in order to assess and control changes in tonal value, whilst the life model may sit in the dark under a spotlight. You may want to draw using the natural light of a window to illuminate your paper, whilst the rest of the room disappears into gloom. This is up to you, but even if all you do is decide to simply use whatever the situation is, just remember it is light you are actually seeing, not things. If you want to think about this in more detail there are other earlier posts on light. 

A few posts on Light

Tone and emotional value

Uses of shadows

More thoughts on lighting

Paper

Choosing paper is a complex subject and there are plenty of earlier posts on paper that might help you think about which ones are best for you. Perhaps one of the most important factors is paper size and shape. In order to capture body/mind transference, your paper needs to be of a size that enables you to develop body movements in front of it and of course to make marks on it using those body movements. Therefore A1 or larger might be required if you are thinking of really pushing this type of work forwards, however you can still do this on a post-it note if that is all you have, but the amount of visual scale translation is much higher and the challenge much harder if you want to go that way. 

Paper shape will affect your physical relationship with the situation, think about the differences between working on portrait, landscape or square formats. The degree of roughness or smoothness will determine the flow of lines or type of mark being made and the paper’s weight will determine the amount of ‘work’ you will be able to engage with it, in terms of rubbing out, scratching into etc. 

Further posts on Paper that would be useful to read if you want to undertake an in-depth preparation before setting out to make a drawing.   

An introduction to paper research

More thoughts on paper (includes further links to other posts on paper)

Paper shape and size 

Online books on the history of paper making
Where to get large sheets of paper

Paper supports

Sundeala soft board

The support for your paper is very important. A good drawing board is essential if you are to develop a firm support, this needs to be further supported by an easel, a table or a donkey. For drawing boards I have traditionally used Sundeala ‘K’ Quality standard pin board, which is manufactured from waste paper, and has a light grey textured surface. Boards are 6mm, 9mm and 12mm in thickness and a standard sheet size is 1220 x 2440mm. I then cut drawing boards to size. You can get other sheet sizes on request. An 8 x 4ft Sundeala board will cost you £60 from Amazon, not that you would normally need a drawing board that big. If you are going to stretch paper a good solid wooden drawing board is better, but far heavier. 

Artist's radial easel

Most art schools will have the artist's radial easel as a standard support for undertaking observational drawing. It can be set up at different heights and has adjustable wooden clamps so that your drawing board can be held in place firmly. However, when using this type of easel any untoward pressure on the drawing board can cause the easel to rock and thus destabilize or upset the delicate balance needed for fine motor control. H frame or studio easels are much more sturdy and although more expensive you will only ever need to purchase one and it should last you a lifetime. Donkeys are ok but if you want the full spectrum of body movement to be built into your drawing, something that allows you to stand is always best. 

'H' Frame or Studio Easel

 

If you are going to use wet materials you may need a table, but check that you can see your drawing subject easily when working at this table. In this case you may want to think about stretching the paper. 

Don’t forget you will need to attach your paper to the board, again opinions vary, but whether you use drawing pins or clips, they will each leave a distinctive impression within the final drawing. 

 

Drawing board clips

Find a link to a video on how to stretch paper at the end of this post which also gives you several drawing exercises to try which can be used as warming up processes when you are trying out materials.

Drawing materials 

Your drawing materials may be wet or dry. However there are big differences between them and as always there are previous posts that are designed to help you think about what you might draw with. However there are some basic differences. If working using very wet materials, such as ink and brush, you may want to work standing at a table, with the paper horizontal, dry techniques such as charcoal or chalks, are fine when working on more vertical surfaces.  The applicators you use are also of course very important, whether these are brushes, charcoal holders or electric erasers, each will have a certain set of qualities that will shape the way the drawing is made. 

Earlier Posts on drawing materials 

Charcoal

Graphite

Ink

The ballpoint pen

Coloured drawing materials:pastels, crayons etc.

Silverpoint

Making your own drawing tools

This initial preparation is an essential first step towards mindfulness, because it is beginning the process of converting your thoughts into a physicality. It is a first step towards ‘material thinking’. Therefore spend some time playing with the papers and materials you are thinking of using and get to know more about them by testing out their limits. 

Drawing and Mindfulness: Part two: Drawing before drawing

Drawing and mindfulness: Part three: Making a drawing
Drawing and mindfulness: Part four: Material conversations
Drawing and mindfulness: Part five: Finding yourself