Drawing Life 13
Our drawing class met last Saturday again and I dreamt up a few new things for us to explore. It’s a nonlinear class; the idea being that whatever we do serves the greater good and practice yields gifts of skill and insight. It surprises me how thrilling it is for everyone. We’re just drawing, after all. Some of the class haven’t drawn since childhood and others have drawn off and on. I’m the teacher and I’ve drawn for a living for thirty years and it’s as thrilling for me as it is for them.
It’s because we’re going somewhere. And every time we do something new we take notice but don’t attach. We’re practicing staying open to inspiration and seeing what comes next. There’s no judgment, only discernment. We look to see what we’ve done and for each of us it’s different, without fail.
On Saturday we practiced drawing faces. I showed them how to draw a simple oval and then draw a face in a stylized way. We cranked up the music, something full of longing this time—Leonard Cohen. Something to open the veins of feeling. And everyone did something interesting with such a simple exercise.
Two people had real artistic breakthroughs. They did work beyond what they thought they could, beyond expectation. True creative exploration that surprised us all. It’s what happens when people gather together in good spirit to focus on doing something for themselves. To just be and experience. Now we take that same spirit into our lives. It all gets curiouser and curiouser.
