What an adventurous and inclusive experience this was. I’m almost reluctant to describe it for fear of allowing the magic to escape.
Jane set up an intriguing still life table with easels encircling it, each with an A1 piece of white paper and a smaller practice paper. There were nine of us and we individually selected three separate drawing mediums and tools from our own equipment to draw with. The choices ranged from charcoal, pencil, inks, coloured pastel, chalk, feathers, paint, sticks, posca pen, brush, bamboo pen, and an eraser.
The initial warm up was to spend five minutes doing a blind drawing with non dominant hand and then another five minutes free drawing with using both hands together. After this we started drawing on the main A1 paper for ten minutes using our chosen implements, with our own perspective of the still life, in whatever scale and style appealed. Then, and this is where the magic begins, we left our own tools behind and moved in a clockwise direction to the next easel. Using the mediums left behind by the previous artist, the process was repeated for another ten minutes. This continued until, after going full circle, we were back at our original positions. During the final four moves Jane had given us prompts to think about, such as ‘tone’, ‘being bold’, ‘foreground/background’, and ‘detail’.
The nine collaborative drawings, as shown below, are testament to an unusual, engrossing, creative and thought provoking practice of artists working together in harmony.
A big thank you to Jane for sharing this with us!
