Drawing is looking and forgetting.

Drawing is looking and deliberately forgetting.

In order to draw what is in front of us, and to be truthful we need to perform a little mind trick sometimes: we need to ignore the self in our heads that is screaming at us with it’s hand up, barely contains themselves: I know, I know, I know this one!  

Because the voice in our brain that knows how this one goes is a loud one, and it’s not listening, or looking. Think of Letters and Numbers. When you look at Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew calligraphy (if you are not educated into reading any of those) you can asume the shapes at face value,  as graphic squiggles of a pleasing shape. Before you can understand type as a words,  you don’t see words or meanings, you only see the shapes of the lines, something that is very hard to do with the shape of the letters you are reading right now. Consider the g in right now. This is not how you write it, is it? And as you see it in the middle of right all sorts of writes, rights, rites and perhaps even wrights come into your head, uninvited. Go away, we are discussing the squeeglediness of g!

Type is present in lots of person made objects, from branding on labels, to signage on roads, and it’s there to inform. So when we are drawing Type is screaming meaning to us and it is almost making us include it in the drawing as an added written text and not as an integral part of an image. When we communicate through drawing there is as much skill in what we include as in what we edit out. 

In order for us to look at Type and really see it in our environment it helps to to contrast it by having a glance at different forms.  When we see Heinz baked beens next to Full Fat Milk and Birds custard powder we engage again with that bit of our heard that indulges is finding differences. To draw without being tempted to write these names into the pictures of tins or jars or bottles of these products, it may help to draw them upside down so that you are less inclined to “read” the words.  Check the lids first! Once we can draw letters effectively onto images as opposed to superimposing text onto them there are endless creative possibilities on how we can play with expectations, and the speed at which meanings can be absorbed. But beware of type and letters in drawings, as they will draw a lot of attention to themselves!

Disregarding what we think we know about whatever we are drawing allows us to be open to seeing things in a different way, and to use drawing as a learning skill.