Drawing as a Way of Visualising Self and Process Based Contemporary Art Practice
Summary
A task in which participants repeat the task of drawing themselves four times over the course of 20 minutes. During this they focus on themselves and how their perception of their being changes by repeating the task. The aim is to better understand the ways in which you are linked to everything you do.
Percival, S. (2023) Projected Drawing 3 [Photograph over Charcoal]. York, England. ‘Projected Drawing 3’ by Sarah Percival is used under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en
This toolkit uses iterative drawing as a way to explore what it means to visualise one’s self and document your experience on the page.
Materials Required (per person):
- x4 Large Sheets of Paper
- Broad Tip Pen
The premise of this task is to focus on the self, not the quality of drawing. Drawing is a tool to enable focus to take place, and thoughts to be processed. The realism or aesthetic of the images made/ marks recorded do not matter at all, and do not need to be shared with anyone else. You do not need to keep them unless you like after this task is completed.
The aim by following this OER is for the learner to think about their actions which are often completed subconsciously. We want to think about how you can ‘trace’ your motions and thoughts, and extend this onto the page. Through repetition, the hope is that the participants will become more free in their creativity connected to how they think about themselves.
Steps:
- ask participants to close their eyes and be silent. Give them audibly the prompt of ‘think of yourself’. Additionally ask them sporadically to ‘think about what you are?’ ‘how do you participate in your everyday life?’ ‘how did you arrive at this moment?’ ‘how do you see yourself in this moment?’. A top tip here is to guide them through this thinking so that they maintain focus on themselves. (2 mins)
- ask participants to draw what they can see using only lines . Think about you in this moment and what directly grabs your interest in the immediate world around you.(4 mins)
- then ask them to draw themselves drawing what they can see. ‘what do you think you looked like during the last step?’. Remind them that this drawing can be abstract and doesn’t need to be a perfect literal depiction. It is about more what you can feel. (4 mins)
- ask them to draw themselves drawing themselves. ‘what do you think you looked like whilst drawing yourself?’ ‘how did you feel whilst drawing yourself?’ (4 mins)
- ask them to draw themselves drawing themselves drawing themselves. ‘how did you feel during the last drawing?’ ‘what has changed about yourself whilst drawing?’ (4 mins)
- ask them to reflect with the other person how the iterative process progressed. How did you find the repetition? What did you learn about yourself? Give them prompts to consider how every activity links, and when thinking about art the previous step cannot be ignored when making the work. How do you now comprehend process? (2 mins)
The participants need not keep their drawings, but hopefully they will have identified a greater level of connection to themselves and their own actions from this task. This can be applied to everyday life and their own creative practices.
