drawings from life

I’ve been going through notebooks, gathering together observational drawings made while out and about. Why be out in the world and draw what one sees? When I touch pen to paper, I enter a different kind of mind space. But the approach makes a difference too. Observational drawing may live in the front of my mind while more intuitive modes light up other areas. Or, it feels that way.

I can’t say I’m always very relaxed when I draw observationally—but I am in motion, and somehow that makes the experience tolerable until I’ve arrived at an outcome. Is it the outcome, then, that makes me want to return to the exercise? I’m not so sure—because I can recall other times where the drawing has had a soothing effect. Once, in a lecture hall, listening to the most awkward speaker, drawing the audience around me was the only way I could sit through the discomfort of the moment.

John Berger writes: “A moment has, for a moment, been saved… Is it possible to send promises backwards?” (p. 23 Bento’s Sketchbook) Am I trying to get my arms around a fleeting thing? I used to call these drawing artifacts “research”—of what? For what? I am remembering that Marion Milner also writes of “noticing what one is noticing”. I will try to find those words and add them here…