Why don't artists have writers' groups?

One of the great things about making art is the fact that it is largely a solo activity. It's an opportunity for quiet, self reflective thought, temporarily cut off from the normal day-to-day distractions of things like making a living and running a family. Working in the studio provides an increasingly rare oasis of solitude where you can be alone with your thoughts immersed in the process of reifying feelings, ideas and observations.

On the other hand, one of the worst things about making art is the fact that it is largely a solo activity. It's an activity that places you in abject isolation with your thoughts and cuts you off from the orientating effects of being in a group and seeing your work in relation to other work and other people. The studio can a scary place where wrestling with your limitations, deciding what to do, and finding your way through the infinite number of choices and decisions in the absence of a client brief or set of instructions can feel lonely and demoralising.

Both of these views are true at the same time. I know this because I've experienced both myself, and I hear these thoughts from my friends who are artists as well. From the outside, making art looks very romantic; made up of blissful days filled with the pleasures of working in a quite studio. But this is only one side of the experience. The other side consists of hours of isolation locked in battle with your innermost doubts about yourself and your abilities.

This sense of isolation and working in a vacuum, is, I believe, one of the main reasons why people don't make more art. The fear of being cut off from any kind of interaction with other people both during the making of the work, and more  importantly, after the work is made, can overshadow the many enjoyable and positive aspects of art making and can stop the creative process in its tracks.

I think all artists in one way or another wrestle with these demons of doubt created by the inherently solo nature of the work. But my question is, why wrestle alone? If most artists struggle with these challenges to self-esteem and the sense of value for time spent in the studio, why struggle in isolation? Why not come together and form a network of critical / supportive collaborators?

Writers have developed a mechanism to address this challenge: the writers' group. A group of writers, each with their own reasons for writing, all at different levels of ability, come together to share their work, test ideas, receive feedback, and learn from each other. For some reason, writers seem to understand the power that emerges  when a group of people engaged in their own personal creative struggle come together to challenge, support and encourage.

But where can an artist go for this kind of conversation? Classes? Workshops? The Internet? 

In the last year or so I've been to some life drawing classes here in London assuming that in addition to drawing, this would be a good opportunity to engage other artists in a dialogue about the work and how it is perceived. But this isn't the case at all. These classes are often just as quiet and isolated as working alone in my studio. Although I had fully expected to engage in a bit of discussion about the work, most of the time is spent in silence. Besides, the conversation, even if it did happen, would focus largely on the techniques employed in the drawings in the classroom, not on the work I am struggling with in my studio.

I've read about some really interesting and quite inspired workshops for artists and other creative-types. Although they sound like a lot of fun, the spirit of many of these sessions are about encouraging camaraderie, participation and enjoyment. The thing I think they often lack is any form of critical feedback or conversational depth in the pursuit of excellence.

I'm sure the internet has made a huge difference here. A quick trawl of blogs by other artists quickly surfaces sites where people show their work-in-progress to the entire world for comment and acknowledgement. I'm sure that the comments that people receive are helpful in providing an uplifting sense of energy for the artists. But the comments are simply that: comments. They are often one-line reactions to the work. Although potentially uplifting, these comments lack the depth and nuance that comes from a face-to-face conversation. Twitter is great, but it is no substitute for a full and proper dialogue. 

So my question is, if the writers' group model works for writers, would it work for artists?

I think it could. Perhaps it works for writers because the medium of writing is language, and using language to talk about stories feels somehow natural. Fair enough. But I suspect that there are a lot of artists out there who would be great collaborators, co-conspirators, conversationalists, and critical friends. I'm thinking of artists who are doing independent work, not just wrestling with technique, but interested in how their work is connected to feelings and generates meaning. Artists who are looking for something more formal than a chat at the pub; interested in engaging in a constructive forum to talk in detail about their work and to offer their reactions to the work created by other artists. Artists not looking to be taught by a teacher, but interested in learning through the facilitated interaction with other artists who are engaged in the struggle for excellence.

Maybe the model I'm thinking of is the 'crit'. When I was at university studying printmaking, we had group crits (critiques) where everyone hung their work in an impromptu gallery set-up and talked about what was going on in the piece. When managed properly, these were rich discussions where everyone involved got something out of it - not just the people whose work was on display.

Sure, something like this would take time to settle in and find the right level. And yes, it would take some careful facilitation, and everyone involved would need to understand and adhere to the code of conduct agreed by the group. But I think it could work.

Watch this space. 

Drawing on evidence

Next time you're at an art exhibition try this experiment: Ask the person you are with to imagine that they can steal one picture from the exhibition and take it home: which one would they steal? Then, at the end of your visit, compare your answers and try to figure out why you each chose the images you did.

Sometimes the answers are personal and wrapped up in a complex array of feelings about the particular subject matter in the picture. But very often the selection seems to have a lot to do with subtle, almost indescribable features of the image that reach into our psyche and resonate somewhere deep inside. It is often very hard to put into words our reasons for the connection we feel with certain pieces of art. I think that we are often attracted to images and stories that seem to vibrate with a kind of 'truth'. And by truth, I mean a version of reality that seems to correspond with the world as we understand it to be.

Exactitude is not truth.
- Henri Matisse

Truth in image making is a kind of accuracy – but it is not synonymous with photographic accuracy. Truth, I think, is the ability to reveal the things that are important but not visible; things that once we see them through art we feel they are undeniably and unquestionably self-evident.

Images can express different kinds of truths; visual truths about appearance, conceptual truths about ideas, or compositional truths about relationships. And I believe that trying to express these truths in a compelling way is what the struggle of making art is really all about.

Truth in drawing or painting emerges through the ability of the maker of the image to marshal the evidence before them in a compelling way. All art is based on some form of evidence. The evidence that artists draw on is the visual and conceptual reality that acts as a reference point in the creation of the image. When making an image an artist is constantly referring to information gathered through a form of direct or reflective investigation. The evidence base includes an infinite range of perceptions such as the subtle way an edge of a form blends into the background, the unique way light falls on a particular surface, the tension that might exist in the relationship between objects or people, the feeling that is created by the sound or smell of a place, and so on.

Through a combination of observation and intuition, 'facts' are gathered about the subject of the image and this evidence is organised and presented through the medium of the work. An artist chooses what is important and constructs the image through a process of aesthetic selection and decision-making. Truth in image making comes from the ability to access the evidence, assess it carefully, select what is important, and organise that evidence in a way that give others a way to see the world through fresh eyes. When in the presence of an image that moves us, I think we are often being presented with irrefutable evidence organised in a compelling way.

Evidence is not a word that is spoken in creative circles very often. Some believe that creativity is all about inventing things out of thin air; a kind of “making things up” using leaps of imagination by pulling ideas and imagery from out of nowhere. Under this definition, creativity is regarded as the ability to actually disengage from facts and evidence in the mistaken belief that taking time to see and listen to the world as it is, to treat things as phenomenological experiences that provide a foundation of information to fuel the creative process, is somehow limiting. For some, drawing and painting is an act of unbridled liberation from the confines of being connected to what is happening around us as participants in what it means to be human. To introduce the need to be faithful to evidence of any kind is, for some, a form of slavery to be resisted at all costs. This kind of detached creativity often produces images (and products and brands and lots of other things) that are seductive on the surface but lack depth, intrigue (truth) underneath.

Making art of any kind is, in some ways, a lot like being a researcher. A researcher is obligated to present the facts and evidence in a truthful and accurate way. I've seen many researchers who focus on presenting the facts objectively. But the problem is, research, like art, is not objective - it is entirely subjective. Where we look and the questions we ask are motivated by subjectivity. And the most skilful researchers find a way to present facts and evidence in a way that is not just a replay of the data in the same sort of way that a photograph can play back the visual data of a situation via a detached “eye”. Great researchers present the evidence in a way that does a lot more than confirm what the world looks like. They apply a subjective lens and tell us a “story” through the evidence that resonates precisely because it touches our deep understanding of the world but does it in a way that helps us see the facts as they are but through clearer eyes.

The camera sees everything at once – we don’t. There is a hierarchy.
- David Hockney

Great drawing and great research are both engaged in the observation and presentation of evidence in a way that illuminates and creates insight into what it means to be a human being. Through both disciplines we are presented with facts and evidence in an attempt to translate them into a compelling picture that is both truthful and resonates with the viewer/listener. The harder a researcher or artist looks and the deeper they probe into the reality of their subject, the richer the evidence base will be and the potentially richer the resulting work will become.

Are doodling and drawing the same thing?

In any meeting inside any organisation in any part of the world, there is likely to be at least one doodler. This is the person who appears to be taking studious notes during the meeting, but is in actual fact busily filling the margins of their notebook with a complex mosaic of patterns, textures, shapes and figures in blue biro.  

I’m always surprised when the doodler, after several uninterrupted minutes of concentrated mark making, lifts their head and adds a useful comment in the discussion that is taking place around them. How is this possible? How can they have such focused and dedicated concentration on their drawing, and yet still manage to follow the flow of the conversation?

The reason, I’ve discovered, is because although doodling and drawing look the same from the outside, are very different on the inside.

Doodling, as it turns out, is a kind of listening, not a kind of drawing. Mark making for a doodler is a way of translating the energy involved in the processing of what they are hearing in the meeting into a form of visual notation. Doodling is a lot closer to taking written notes than it is to making an image. When a doodler returns to their doodle after the meeting, the image seems to contain the memory of the things that were spoken in the room. A doodler can often look at their doodle days or even weeks later and recall elements of the conversation that took place with great precision. This is because the image takes them back to the time of creation. Although the marks are not illustrations of what has been spoken about in the meeting, the marks seem to unlock the memory of the conversation. The intricate patterns and stream-of-consciousness imagery are a kind of mnemonic hieroglyph. 

The doodlers I’ve spoken to about this report that they can listen better and have greater recall when they doodle in a meeting. Some say that without doodling they would need to have eye contact with other people in the room which would be a distraction to their ability to listen effectively. Somehow, by doodling, they effectively create an internal feedback loop that transfers the energy involved in processing what is being heard into a graphic mark that serves as both a record of the information and a key to unlock the memory of the discussion at a later date.

But I find doodling very odd. This is because I draw, but I don’t doodle. Actually it’s not that I don’t doodle, it’s that I can’t doodle. I don’t have anything against doodling (it looks like a great way to spend time in a meeting, and it has practical benefits), it’s just that the second my pen touches the paper to create an image, my focus shifts entirely to the drawing being created and my awareness of the conversation around me stops almost entirely. I don’t understand how people can draw and listen at the same time. My brain just isn’t wired for doodling. And I suspect it is the same for many people who draw.

Drawing, for me, is an all-consuming act of decision-making and selection. Even casual sketching requires a degree of focus that won’t allow information that is not central to the creation of the image to interrupt the flow of the thinking-deciding-mark making. So drawing, for me, is very different from doodling. Doodling is a way to listen and recall. Drawing is a way to see and translate.

Next time you see someone in a meeting making an image, ask them whether they are doodling or drawing. If they’re doodling, then let them carry on, but if they’re drawing then it might be best to suggest they put down their pen and pay attention.

[For more on this, you can see a very passionate and lucid description of the doodling process and its advantages in a TED talk by Sunni Brown at:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sunni_brown.html 

Material differences

Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I have recently started using a little drawing app on my iPhone. After trying a few different ones, I eventually settled on Sketchbook Mobile by Autodesk. It's actually a great little program with a wide range of tools to use that, in the right hands, can produce some pretty sophisticated images.

Me, I just stick to the basic stuff. I like to draw so I mainly use the tools that look a little like the pencils and pens I carry around in my bag normally. Maybe it's my early days as a cartoon animator back in Philadelphia, but I also like to play around with adding colour on a different layer that I can edit separately from the original drawing. I can then incorporate the colour to the sketch by placing the layer with the colour under the one with the lines - just like painting the back of an animation cel (back in the days when animators did that sort of thing).

It's a fun app to use, and I invested in a little stylus as well that allows me to draw with something that resembles a pencil instead of having to use my finger all the time. It's just like drawing in a sketchbook, except it's on the phone, right? 

Well, not exactly.

But before I get into the differences, let me start with the similarities. In some basic ways, drawing with the iPhone and drawing on paper are a lot alike. The feeling of "flow" that I experience when drawing with a pen and paper, also comes on when I am drawing with an electronic pencil in the app. When I'm involved in the process of actual mark making, these two experiences share very similar qualities. In both cases, I completely lose track of time and my connection with whatever I am drawing seems to become tightly fused through the act of looking and drawing. The feeling is hard to describe, but I know when it's there - and when it isn't.

The thing that I've noticed is that this feeling of flow and connection is broken when using the app whenever I need to engage the interface to change to a different drawing tool or select a new colour to use. This doesn't happen when working in traditional media. When I'm working on paper using physical materials, choosing a different pencil or dipping a brush into a different paint colour is all part of the same experience of being in connection with the drawing process. But with the on-screen app, this process of having to use an interface to mediate my decisions about which pencil, pen, brush, or colour to use seems to engage a different part of my brain. My decision-making process has to conform to the rules and limitations of the software. This activation of a different, and no doubt logical, thinking process often jolts me out of the sense of flow and connection with the drawing process. In this moment of choosing a new tool, I can clearly feel a different thought process taking over; one that is more distant and judging. New questions about the image pop into my head, and I can feel a different editorial conversation starting to emerge. In that moment, I'm no longer connected to the image. I am a viewer making a critical assessment of its worth as an object in the world.

Now, is this such a big deal? Not really I guess. It's just that we often assume that these new tools that are being used with increasing frequency by artists and designers are experientially synonymous with traditional physical media. But they're not the same. We engage different parts of our brains when using these digital tools, and the artwork we produce using them is naturally altered as a result.

The tools and materials we use to draw require different kinds of thinking and engagement in our brains. The sense of flow that is so fundamental to the image making process is, I think, interrupted by this constant switching between right brain intuitive connection to left brain logical selection.

Now, I'm not making a value judgement here. Artists using digital tools can, and do, create fantastic and moving imagery. I'm just noting that these two experiences of drawing are not the same, so let's not pretend they are. 

Does this matter? Most of the time, probably not. But sometimes it certainly does. If we are more attentive to the differences in how these digital tools change both the experience, and therefore, the output of our creative work, we may cast a more critical eye when choosing the right tools for the job.

All that said, here are a selection of a few recent digital drawings. 

Why sketch?

Most people see sketching as a kind of drawing. Not as informal and stream-of-consciousness as doodling, nor as refined as a finished drawing, sketching is a way to work though ideas. It’s a process of exploration and a way to transform a rough notion into something clearly visible to oneself and to others. It allows us to reify concepts so they can be seen, evaluated, and used as the basis for creative decisions.

Nearly everyone is familiar with the idea of sketching. We all know that the car we drive, the building we are sitting in, and the sculpture in the city square probably all started life as a drawing. It’s safe to say that most people have an intuitive understanding of the purpose of sketching and its place in the creative process.

This is because many artistic and design disciplines have well understood sketch languages that underpin the working process. Painting, sculpture, product design, interior design, filmmaking, and architecture all operate with well-defined sketching processes built into their creative decision-making. In each of these disciplines, sketching (and sketches) forms an essential part of the journey from rough idea to finished work. Everyone involved in the process, and even people outside the process, understands the language of the sketch and understands how the sketching process helps to generate better thinking and better outcomes at the end. When people look at a sketch, they know intuitively that they are looking at a sketch and expectations are set accordingly. No one expects more of the sketch than it can deliver.

Sketching is a powerful tool in these situations because it is both a process of thinking and also a way of communicating ideas. It tends to be fast. It can be used to both generate and refine ideas. And when used properly, everyone involved becomes a creative collaborator helping to build a better solution in the end.

But if sketching is such a good way to explore ideas and quickly and efficiently refine thinking, why is it almost the exclusive domain of specific art and design disciplines? There are some design disciplines, such as digital media design, that don’t have a well-defined sketch language. Why is this? And why isn’t sketching more widely understood and used by business managers tackling complex communication, process, and structural problems?

The problem lies with the close association that sketching has with drawing. Although this association is relevant in some cases, creative problems that aren’t naturally resolved or aided through drawing tend not to use sketching as part of the process.

The reason for this is simple: people see sketching as a kind of drawing, not a kind of thinking. If instead we regarded sketching as a kind of thinking then we would possibly see more ways to employ the power of sketching to generate solutions to other kinds of creative problems. Sketching can take many more forms than just drawing.

Now there’s no doubt that drawing is a great way to sketch, and if more people developed the skills and confidence to draw as part of the way they engage with the world, their ability to solve problems and create better solutions would be improved. But the thing that often stands in the way of sketching is not drawing skill – it’s the computer. The computer tricks us into thinking we are sketching, when in actual fact our minds are engaged in the process of using the computer, not articulating the idea.

You can see this played out in some design disciplines. For example, most digital media designers rarely pick up a pencil at any stage in the process. Although there are lots of websites out there that are fantastic experiences and a pleasure to use, there are many, many more which are counter-intuitive expressions of utterly thoughtless design. Graphic designers too tend to draw less and less these days as a part of their process. And where drawing is used, it is often not of a sufficient level of detail and information to be a helpful addition to the process of making decisions.

The reason for this is the tools of the trade. The entire creative process of digital media designers and graphic designers is carried out using the computer. The problem here is that even if a designer thinks he or she is sketching, the second they open up Photoshop or Illustrator they are automatically engaged in the process of making a finished product. The tool leans so heavily in the direction of the finished item that it is impossible for a designer to resist the pleasurable temptation to fiddle with details before the basic idea is even worked out. The rush to the finished product means that ideas remain unexplored and decisions about finishing details wind up being made at the start of the process instead of at the end.

This same problem undermines the creative thinking of business leaders and managers too. People in business are constantly being asked to generate ideas and solutions to complex problems, but because they lack a well understood sketch language, the tendency is to use the most obvious tool – the computer – and do all the thinking there.

Let’s take planning for instance. Planning a complex project should ideally be a sculptural exercise in shaping the right sequence of activity to achieve a goal. Instead it quickly turns into a process of filling in lines on a spreadsheet in Excel or MS Project. In the absence of a sketching process, the tool takes over and all the thinking directed at filling in the spreadsheet, not in solving the challenges of sequencing, interdependencies, and prioritisation. Making a beautiful plan document becomes the aim while the value of the planning conversation via a robust sketching process gets forgotten.

The same holds true for presentations. Everyone in business these days is required at times to communicate complex ideas in a simple and memorable way. Yet, in spite of this creatively challenging brief, sketching as a way to work out what is important and what needs to be said is absent from the process. People jump into PowerPoint before they have even figured out what they want to say. Time is wasted in the beginning on selecting fonts, colours, and bullet styles. Ideas that have no value end up surviving in the final version simply because the author spent significant amounts of energy choosing clip art. And as a result of the absence of a sketching process, people in business routinely suffer the consequences of poorly constructed stories delivered in PowerPoint.

Introducing a sketching moment in the process of creating plans, presentations, structures, technical architectures, business models, etc would force a different mode of thinking in the early part of the process when it is most critical. Sketching should be part of everyone’s skill set in any line of work that requires the ability to solve complex problems where different emotional and logical criteria need to be addressed.

Developing a sketch habit in the early stages of the creation of an idea requires four things to be successful:

• Speed of execution – The sketching process needs to accelerate the generation and refinement of ideas, not slow them down. Tools and techniques need to be lightweight, easy to use, and not dependent on technology or complex operations.

• Clarity that it is a sketch – The tools that are used should not be the same tools to develop the final output. Don’t “sketch” in Excel, PowerPoint, Word, or Photoshop. Sketch in one technology (paper, whiteboard, Post-its) and finish in another. Find ways to share ideas so they clearly communicate that this is a sketch to avoid the temptation to critique a sketch using the criteria of the finished product.

• Answering the right questions – Sketching works well when it understands the questions it is seeking to answer. Don’t try to answer detailed finishing questions in the early sketch process. Keep the sketching focused on the right questions and don’t get off track.

• A process of reflection and review – For sketching to be successful, it needs the author to be involved in a nearly simultaneous process of reflection and review. This means that the process of creating the sketch needs to be ‘plastic’ enough to be changed easily on the fly. Describing one idea in the sketch will change a previous decision and the sketch process needs to be able to respond to this easily.
  

Sketching is a powerful tool no matter what your discipline. Even if you don’t draw, everyone should sketch.

Can a group of people make a good drawing?

Can a group of people create a beautiful and compelling piece of art? Yes, of course. There are hundreds of great examples ranging from the ateliers of the Renaissance masters who had teams of apprentices working on large, complex paintings, to the studios of Walt Disney in the 1930s who changed the face of animation forever with the release of Snow White, through to the thousands of people in China who collaborated to help create Ai Weiwei’s sunflower seeds installed at the Tate Modern in 2011. Lots of people working to create art that looks as if it were made by one hand.

The reason for involving other people in the creative and production process is very often due to the simple fact that one person, working on their own, can’t do it all by themselves – either because of the range of skills required or the sheer volume of work. To coordinate the creative effort of teams of people, an organisation needs to be created with reporting lines, decision hierarchies and clear roles and responsibilities. Whether it is the master painter or the film director, these creative processes have someone in charge of the process to ensure quality and consistent adherence to a vision.

But what about the humble drawing? Drawing is largely a solo activity and, as John Berger points out, knowing that drawings are done by individuals, not teams, means when we look at a painting we are reminded of the subject, but when we look at a drawing we are reminded of the artist. However, given that drawing is such an individual creative process, is it possible for a group of artists, working without a clearly defined role structure, to make a coherent and compelling drawing?

Over the last few months I have attended some life drawing classes at the Prince’s Drawing School in Shoreditch, London. www.princesdrawingschool.org In a recent session we did a short exercise where we each drew the model for five minutes. At the end of the five minutes each person moved to the easel to their left and took up the drawing that was already in progress. For the next five minutes we were encouraged to engage with the unfamiliar drawing on its own terms and not be afraid to rub out parts and fix things that we didn’t feel were working. The aim was to try to continue the drawing, but improve it in some way. We carried on doing this every five minutes for about a half an hour, each time making additions and corrections to the different drawings in the circle.

At the end we took a look at the results. Most of the drawings looked as one might expect – a mish-mash of different approaches jumbled together to create something interesting at best, but not terribly beautiful or compelling.


But one drawing stood out from the rest. For some reason, one of the images worked and created an interesting piece that had something clearly special about it. Without discussing it ahead of time, each of us had somehow played to our strengths. The resulting marks, instead of competing against each other, harmonised. This drawing had a sense of coherence and appeal that none of the other images had.

Not only does this image challenge a few assumptions about the nature of drawing as a solo activity, it also raises an interesting question about authorship. If there is no one in charge of the creative process, whose drawing is it? It’s like a fantastic conversation with a group of friends. The conversation itself is the product of the collaborative interaction of the group, but no one person can claim ownership to the output. Like a conversation or a dance with a partner, this drawing is an unspoken interplay of decisions and contributions. Part of its charm lies in the feeling of having made these connections with other people through the mark making process.

Is inspiration actually a form of permission?

Visual people tend to find inspiration in the work of other visual people. Walk into the studio of any artist or designer and you will very likely find images, books, objects and other visual odds and ends scattered around the place. Sometimes they can be ordered and organised, but most often they are pinned to the wall, taped to the easel, and sitting on the desk next to the computer.

These things aren’t there by accident. They have been carefully selected and combined into a tapestry of personal inspiration. Selected for their colour, form, size, subject, technique – whatever – artists and designers surround themselves with these inspirational reference items as a matter of habit. This is not about copying; it is about comfort. Having these images and objects close at hand, and occasionally picking them up and looking at them feels good. In some strange way being in the presence of these talismanic objects brings a sense of comfort and security to an endeavour that is often fraught with anxiety and self-doubt.

More than mere decoration – they form a kind of artistic ‘habitat’ that helps to create the conditions for the right kind of conversation with the drawing, painting, etc. In some ways these things are almost more important than the physical aspects of the studio in terms of creating an environment that is conducive to the right kind of creativity. Their presence seems to create an atmosphere that supports the creative process. They are without a doubt an explicit source of inspiration. But that's not all.

In addition to the inspiration that comes from these images and objects, I also think that these things confer a kind of ‘permission’ to the artist or designer. Because these things are very often infused with a particular kind of energy, and very often a particular kind of authorial commitment (even if that author is Mother Nature) they do more than simply inspire. These images and objects act as indicators that there are other people in the world who think a bit like you do.

Why is this so important in a field of endeavour that is fundamentally attached to the notion of free will and independent creative invention? Starting with the Renaissance, and since the early twentieth century in particular, the practice of western artists and designers has become increasingly driven by the myth of the lone genius. Working in complete isolation in order to have a pure, unadulterated idea has become an unspoken artistic ambition. This kind of isolation is a very uncomfortable place for all but a tiny fraction of people engaged in creative work. Everyone needs inspiration, but I suspect that many people need something more as well.

My hunch is that the tendency to surround oneself with carefully selected images and objects is partly about providing inspiration, but also about providing permission from across time and geography at just the moment it is needed. When stepping into the uncharted waters outside ones creative comfort zone it is helpful to have not just a sense of inspiration, but a sense of support and acceptance. It is energising to know that in that moment there are people (whom you have never met) who can provide silent encouragement for acts of personal artistic bravery. I believe that studios around the world (including my own) are effectively ‘wallpapered’ not with pieces of inspiration, but with words of encouragement.

Do we have the time to make bad drawings?

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell reveals why some people are more successful than others. His argument is simple: if you want to get really good at something, you have to do the time. He challenges the myth of pure genius as an explanation for top performance in any endeavour where the separation between very good and outstanding seems to rest on innate talent alone.

If luck plays any part in the equation, it is not about being lucky enough to be born with the talent to be the best. Instead it is being lucky enough to be given the opportunity spend the right amount of time to get to greatness. By his estimation, the people who are the best in what ever it is they do have put in a staggering 10,000 hours to get there.

Whether you are referring to high performing athletes, top musicians, or hugely successful performers like The Beatles, there is a story behind their success that is about the application of time to really hone their skills through sustained repetition of effort. Gladwell is not saying that talent and a passion for the subject doesn’t play any part at all. He is simply saying that talent alone is not a sufficient explanation for outstanding performance.

For many artists, this is probably reassuring in some ways. How many of us could possibly be surprised to learn that if you want to make truly great drawings or paintings you need to put in the time that it takes to become excellent. The logic is simple: more time in = better art out.

To a point, this is true. To learn the skills necessary to make strong images, an artist needs to spend time in the studio making work. How to handle materials and develop sophisticated craftsmanship requires time behind the pencil or brush.

But when it comes to making art – especially really excellent art – time is not enough. There’s more to making great art than time. How you spend the time really matters.

Time is an issue for our society today. Ask almost any friend how they are, and many will reply simply, “busy”. This is because our lives today are a series of non-stop activity. Our time and attention is being relentlessly sought after by an ever-expanding network of family, friends, work colleagues, customers, advertisers, media producers and brands. Days are full of commitments and desires that seem to fight for a finite resource of hours. Many people feel they are under increasing pressure to squeeze as much as they can into their days. Technology seems to provide both the problem and the solution as we find ourselves simultaneously celebrating and cursing the existence of things like email, Facebook, and Twitter. Armed with our Blackberries, phones, tablets and laptops, we are able to fill even the tiniest fragment of our day with a moment of connection, productivity or entertainment. In a world where our time is increasingly managed, budgeted, apportioned, and scheduled in order to maximise how it is spent, time has become a precious commodity. To waste ones time is to commit a sort of crime against oneself.

Against this time-pressured backdrop, some of us want to be able to draw and paint better. We want to make images that aren’t simply nice or clever. We want to be more than facile generators of pleasing pictures. Instead we want to create experiences that touch the soul of the viewer; that capture the essence of the subject being represented; that mediate a connection from an idea to a feeling through the application of marks or colours. We want to create images that are somehow supercharged with a life that the lines on the paper can’t seem to explain.

To even have a shot at making drawings or paintings that achieve this we know we need to get into the studio and put in the hours. Time at the paper or canvas is a fundamental prerequisite to the creation of images that don’t just record, but resonate.

But as our hand reaches out, and our pencil or brush touches the paper, and the first mark or stroke of paint is applied to the surface, we face a nagging question: What if I make a bad drawing or paining; will my time have been wasted?

Although it may seem like a small question that can be pushed aside easily, it is a fundamental block to the creation of excellent work. This is the question that kills artistic discovery.

The reason this is a killer question starts with the fact that nobody sets out to make a bad drawing or painting. Getting good at something requires us to at least try to do great work all the time. Most artists approach their work knowing that every stroke, every mark, every line needs to contribute to the creation of something more than the sum of the parts. Striving for excellence is embedded in every moment of the creative act.

Although striving for excellence is clearly the right approach, it is also, weirdly, very dangerous to an artist looking to make work that transcends being a mere picture but instead reaches out and grabs people by the lapels and demands an emotional reaction.

It’s been said that perfect is the enemy of great. This may be because striving for excellence combined with the sense that time cannot be wasted on doing bad work creates the ideal conditions for mediocrity. The reason is simple: if time is precious and cannot be wasted, and making a bad drawing or painting is a waste of time, then we will do whatever it takes to make sure we don’t create bad art. Enter mediocrity.

For many people, drawing or painting is a scheduled activity fitting in around other commitments of family, work, etc. Studio time and class time is scheduled, set aside and protected. This time has to be almost fought for and defended from other demands that inevitably encroach upon it. But the trouble starts precisely because the time is so precious. Under this kind of pressure the desire to make a “good” piece of art overrides the ability to being open to the learning that comes from doing something that is not up to the grade.

Resisting the inevitable possibility of making a bad piece of art under these conditions is unbelievably difficult. So difficult in fact that many people don’t even subject themselves to the torture and never make it into the studio to make anything at all because the weight of wasting time is so immense.

The secret to making great art is making bad art. All artists need to get the bad work out of themselves to learn from both the process and the product. And to do this, one needs real courage. Courage to fight back the voices in ones head that ask the questions that kill creative growth such as: “What’s the purpose of this?”, “Who would want to buy this?”, “Shouldn’t I be doing something else with my time?”, “Am I any good at this?”, “How can I make sure this doesn’t turn out bad?” Etc.

Making great art requires an artist to make bad art – and lots of it. Making lots of bad art requires two things: time in the studio, and immense courage to fight against the feelings of inadequacy that inevitably rise up in moments of failure.

This is not to say that the aim of artists should be to make bad art. Quite the opposite! Making art is a process of discovery. Making really good art requires an artist to have made thousands of little discoveries of material, technique, form, composition, colour, representation, etc over thousands of hours of practice. The quickest way to make these discoveries is to make a lot of work that is free from inappropriate critique at the time of making. In the moment of making, artists need to be constantly striving for excellence, but also need to find a way to be unburdened from energy-sapping, corrosive questions of purpose or achievement.

All artists need strategies to be able to bring both the right amount of time and the right degree of freedom-to-fail to their practice. But the question isn’t do I have the skill to do great work; it is do I have the courage to do enough bad work?

Is looking the same as seeing?

After nearly 15 years, I have started drawing from life again. This past January, I signed up for a life drawing class at the Prince’s Drawing School in London. It’s in a beautiful building in Shoreditch with two large studio rooms for drawing and painting from a live model.

My previous experiences of life drawing were mainly about skill acquisition. Drawing from the model was really about trying to get the image that I was making to look the best it possibly could. And by “best”, I mean most skilful. Although I was concentrating on the model and trying to see the nuances that needed to be translated into marks on the paper, my main focus was the image I was creating, not the model in the room.

Fifteen years on, and with a few other life experiences now behind me, I have discovered that my perception has changed. Of course I am interested in making images that convey something essential about the model I am drawing, but there’s more going on now.

For a start, I understand that my brain constantly play tricks on me. It encourages me to only see the things that I think I already know. This trickery means that I can sometimes slip into a kind of “knowing gaze” where the eyes are open, but the brain is in the way acting as a translator turning a difficult collection of shapes into convenient shorthand descriptions such as “foot”, “side of face”, and so on. The result of this filtration process is a drawing that may (or may not) look good, but captures nothing of the essence of the model sitting before me.

The difference today is that I am more aware that my brain is acting as this not-so-helpful translator of experience into pre-packaged shapes. And as a result, I trust my brain a lot less. My challenge today is to recognise the difference between looking and seeing, and to use this understanding to develop a more authentic connection to the thing I am drawing.

Looking is something we do everyday. Looking is a continuous act of recognition and labeling. It is the mechanism we use to get around the world and make sense of the information and symbols that bombard us from every angle. In a life overloaded with ideas and information, we have developed a very sophisticated sense of looking. We spot, recognise, label, prioritise, and dismiss thousands of times a second. Without this overdeveloped sense of looking we would be stopped in our tracks the same way a three-year-old is mesmerised by every stick, stone or insect between home and the local shop.

Seeing is different. Seeing is an unfiltered regard for the objects that appear before you. It is a pure response to the shapes that enter the eyes. My aim in life drawing now is to do less looking, and more seeing.

But it’s hard. We are trained to look. We don’t spend much time really seeing the world as it truly is. And I wonder if many problems in life might be better solved if we could learn to see instead of just look. If we could engage things as they really are, and not filter or apply our pre-packaged definitions of what is going on, we might stand a chance of actually finding the right answer.

Interestingly, in my work helping teams within large organisations navigate the difficult waters of change and transformation it is clear that there is a lot of looking, but not a lot of seeing going on. When presented with the difficult situations that every business leader comes up against in their work (things like resolving a dispute, dealing with de-motivated staff, sorting out internal turf wars, etc) people tend to look at the problem. But they rarely take the time to really see what is going on and get intimately familiar with the problem on its own terms. It is easier to look at it, label it, address it, and move on. But the consequence is that many hours are wasted in organisations for the simple lack of seeing.

So, maybe more people should go to life drawing classes and learn to see. What if life drawing were a requirement for all students in business schools? Would we find a new breed of business leader coming through with a heightened observational capacity to see the situation as it really is?

In a world built on an ability to perpetually increase our velocity, perhaps drawing is the way to re-acquaint us with the benefits of seeing what's really going on around us.

Strength in numbers

Repetition as a strategy for making art

A painter friend of mine once told me, “If you can’t make it good, make it big. And if you can’t make it big, make it red.”

Absurd, right? I don’t think he was completely serious, but there are some artists who do pretty well following an approach as simple as this. However if I look beyond the absurdity of my friend’s suggestion, I'm left with a piece of advice that is in fact a strategy for making art. Maybe it’s not the best strategy, but it’s a strategy nevertheless.

Every piece of art is guided by a making-strategy of some sort; an approach or guiding principle that informs the making of the work in a fundamental way. All artists employ a range of making-strategies in the creation of their work (consciously or not). Make it big. Make it small. Make it fast. Take your time. Use authentic traditional materials. Use stuff from the hardware store. Find materials that resonate with personal meaning. Draw on beautiful clean paper. Draw on scraps of paper lying in the studio. And so on.

So what is a making-strategy good for? And why is it important to spend time thinking about the ways different making-strategies are used? Because these strategies hold some of the clues that allow us to understand how to connect the experience of a piece of art to our lives. Making-strategies are a way into a work as both an artist and a viewer, and they provide us with a point of departure to begin a conversation with the work.

To look at making-strategies I think it is helpful to first think about the kinds of questions that art takes on. Painting, drawing and sculpture (and all other forms of visual and performing art) are very good at helping us answer particular kinds of questions. Very often people mistakenly assume that the subject of a painting or drawing are the things represented in the image (the figures, the landscape, the still life objects, etc). This isn’t the case. The subject of a work of art is the question that the piece is seeking to answer. The reason the work exists in the first place is, fundamentally, to try to answer a particular question. Artwork that is generated in the absence of an underlying question remains disconnected from our emotional register, and our response to these works often feels shallow and empty.

Some subjects (i.e. questions) are better addressed through art than through other modes of exploration, research and inquiry. Questions of feeling, relationship, uncertainty, emotion, etc, are better suited to artistic rather than scientific exploration. This is because painting, drawing, sculpture, etc are “technologies” brilliantly suited to answering particular kinds of questions. No other technology is as suited to bringing both intellectual and emotional exploration together in the service of answering particular questions as painting, drawing or sculpture are. Art can go where science cannot.

The strategy for making a work is therefore informed by the question the work is seeking to answer. Different questions will, by their nature, inspire different making-strategies. If the question is purely about creating visual impact in the mind of the viewer, then my friend's simple strategy of “make it big or make it red” is not a bad place to start. But if the question is more nuanced and potentially lasting than mere visual impact, then the making-strategy needs to be adjusted accordingly.

Repetition is one such making-strategy. Perhaps it’s the ex-animator in me, or my degree in printmaking, but I gravitate to work that uses multiple images and repetition as an exploratory approach. Whether the goal is to create thousands of temporally linked animation drawings, a series of fifty nearly identical prints, a triptych of one-off pencil drawings, or a series of sketches all linked by colour or common form, I find the use of multiple images immediately captivating.

There are a number of questions for which repetition is a great strategic jumping-off point. Here are five and a few examples of how artists have used repetition as a making-strategy to try to address them.

1. A question of time. (What’s the difference?)

Noticing change is how we tell time. Recording the effects of change and evolution is a way to track a sense of progression. Growing and dying are transformative conditions that can be spotted and amplified through the use of repetition. The changes can be obvious and act as sort of stills from a time-lapse film. Sometimes the changes being explored through art are subtle and largely undetectable from our normal day-to-day experience because what is changing is not the physical exterior of something or someone, but an interior world. When confronted with a series of (nearly) identical images, a question gets posited in our mind about the difference that is being recorded. The images may look the same, but they aren’t really the same. Equipped with this experience, we can turn to our lives and look at things that look the same as before, but wonder what is different that our eyes can’t detect.

Dryden Goodwin

Sustained Endeavour

(25 drawings of the same photograph of Sir Steve Redgrave - pencil on paper on video) 2006

2. A question of story (What happens next?)

Beginnings, middles, and ends are all part of how we construct our understanding of what is happening in our lives. This is why novels and films are such great mediums for dealing with questions of story. I think we find them easy to relate to because this is fundamentally how we explain the story of our own experience to ourselves. Drawings and paintings struggle a bit with narrative depiction, but comic books and animation of course transcend this limitation by using film or the convention of panels on a printed page as the display mechanism for drawings that operate chronologically.

But repetition can be used as an approach in painting and drawing to depict a story through a series of sequentially associated images held together by temporal logic; this happened first, and then this happened next. This use of repetition can instil a sense of plot progression where things develop through a kind of narrative. But it also assists our reading of images by offering a way into the work that goes beyond the surface image and activates our natural desire to explain things through stories.

Joseph Beuys

Untitled

(Pencil on four sheets of paper on painted wood panel) 1947 and 1970s

3. A question of movement (What’s happening?)

Our concept of space is constructed based on our ability to physically engage with the three-dimensional world around us. Movement through space helps us translate the two dimensional world of colours and shapes into a three dimensional experience. More than early cinematographers, it was Eduard Muybridge who helped us understand how things move through space. His pioneering work in photographing people and animals in motion has been scrutinised by generations of animators and artists. By stopping motion in its tracks, people suddenly had access to a world of information that was taking place in front of them every day but never had access to. The evidence of his influence can be seen in a variety of places from Walt Disney to Francis Bacon.

But today, in a post-Futurist, post-Modern, post-Avatar world, movement is explored not as the serious subject that is was in the 20^th century, but very often with humour and a kind of knowing irony. Repetition and sequence today are tools for transforming authentic movement into something magical.

Robin Rhode

He Got Game

(Six in a series of twelve photographs - C-prints) 2001

4. A question of focus (What’s important?)

Every parent (and every successful politician or business leader for that matter) eventually learns a very simple truth about effective communication: if you want to get your point across, you have to say it more than once. Very often, you need to say things again and again. And sometimes again. And if the idea you want to share is in any way subtle, you often need to say things lots of times in order to encourage your audience to come to the idea in a way that goes beyond mere communication and reaches a deeper and more personal level of engagement. Communication managers inside large corporations know this basic rule as well, yet ironically, a common refrain that can be heard in board rooms and management meetings around the world is, “But surely they must know what is going on, I sent them an email!”. And what parent hasn’t said (shouted?) the classic line, “How many times do I have to tell you to...”?

We all know from experience that getting even simple ideas across to other people isn’t so simple. A single image on its own (like the lone corporate email) needs to work very, very hard to bring our attention to a particular detail in the work or the message. Subtle differences or similarities between specific pictorial elements or between our conceptual expectations and what is depicted in the picture will not get into our mind or our heart without help.

But ideas can be amplified through repetition. Repetition is a way to share the curiosity of the artist and can turn a subtle background issue into the main focus of the work. Repetition can help to direct attention to the things that are most important about the work and can break down the natural information barriers that we have built around us. It is a way to turn a mere portrait or landscape into an exploration of preconceptions about notions of beauty, power, oppression, etc.

Marlene Dumas:

From Measuring Your Own Grave exhibition at MOCA

(Black ink on paper) 2009

5. A question of commitment (What’s going on inside?)

Imagine a simple drawing of a flower hanging on a white wall. Then imagine ten drawings of the same flower. Now imagine the wall covered in hundreds or even thousands of drawings of a flower. Our concept of the flower changes as more images are added to the mix. As more flowers are added, each individual flower becomes simultaneously less and more significant. Our sense of the importance of the individual image shifts and we look past the marks of the single image and instead are confronted by the impact created when images work in groups. Sometimes a group of images feels like a chorus singing together, and sometimes a group of images can feel like a gang looking to assault their next victim. But there is strength in numbers.

For some artists, drawing or painting is a kind of mantra or chant to oneself. The act of making is almost musical wherein the artist becomes a drummer repeating a rhythmic beat of meaningful gestures. The mantra can be a repetition of marks, colours, objects, and/or forms. Using repetition in this way means that the individual drawing/painting/sculpture is not significant on its own. Each individual execution is simply one small part of a larger and more significant process of obsessive repetition. Obsessive acts can be both mysterious and frightening, and standing in the presence of the products of a repetitive obsessive act can be powerful. It raises questions of intent as our mind flicks between looking at the work itself and imagining the repetitive process that the artist went through to create it. This kind of mantra, spoken over and over through something as simple as mark making, creates work that is often much greater than the sum of the individual parts.

Magdalena Abakanowicz

From the cycle Corps

(Charcoal on paper) 1996

Crowd

(Standing figures in 22 parts - Burlap and synthetic resin) 1986 - 1987