Well, one thing for sure, I’m learning more in my drawing class than I’m teaching. On Saturday I brought in a roll of large white paper and cut off a piece about 3′ by 5′ for each person to draw on. We taped the paper onto the walls so we could actually look around and see what our fellow artists were doing as we drew. I brought in some new photographs culled from magazines—innocuous stuff like room interiors, landscapes, objects, people. Something for people to use to get going if they needed to.  But I told the class that we’d continue with our efforts in going towards abstraction—even if they proved to be efforts towards pushing a ‘realistic’ drawing towards expressive style. Too often we get caught up in thinking that drawing is about putting down some realistic image of something when, really, it’s just making marks and seeing what those marks might convey.

One thing the class has shown me is that when we see drawing as making marks then everyone can draw. And when people stop thinking about realism they free themselves to play around and appreciate their own hand in whatever it’s doing. It takes that appreciation to free ourselves from the awful constraints of judgment that really inhibit artistic development. I love realism in, say, an Edward Hopper. He could not have achieved what he did with a photograph or without the skills that he developed. He found something vital and moving to express with realism. He gave us something to think about with it and marked a moment in the evolution of cities and urban living, perhaps a universal moment. He saw a beauty in loneliness—that the person, in whatever state, can be dignified and may be perched even on the edge of communion with something larger than self. I feel that in his paintings.

But, unless we are called to express something in terms of realism it is not necessary to master it. Not to my mind anyway. We don’t need to get hung up on it. It is useful to practice drawing but I think it’s most useful to practice the pleasure that comes from doing. That’s where the creative process really works its magic.  The pleasure is something that fuels all of our lives.
Anyway, I ramble, but what really amazed me on Saturday was that working really big with just the suggestion that we consider moving towards abstraction opened everyone right up. Amazing drawings emerged. This is the second time this term we’ve worked really big and the same thing happened both times. I’m kind of gobsmacked. It’s making me think that we need to always think bigger and act bigger. It’s more freeing and more fun.

We also noted how great it was to be able to wander around the room and see what each person was doing, take a little inspiration and go back to our own work. We noted that none of us would have done the drawings we did if we hadn’t been working there together. There is a synergy that comes from working together that takes you further as Picasso and Matisse proved in their artistic friendship. It totally doesn’t matter that we become Picasso or Matisse. What matters to me is that we come to know our own free, fun selves. And, on Saturday, we did. Thanks to the wondrous artists in my class!!