During the workshop for TMA1431, Creative Studio, Ryan Durran led us through an insightful practice-focused workshop where we, as creative practitioners from a range of disciplines realigned what we recognise as drawing. To be frank, I was unsure of what I would be able to take back from this workshop when reading the summary and notes prior to the session beginning. Most of my creative process is undertaken through digital channels such as my mobile phone, my laptop or through my iPad. Although a sketchbook or two are always available should I require, these are seldom used aside for quick notes, and brainstorming concepts before they leave my mind. However, this workshop led me to reimagine drawing. Relearn what I know and what I think of the practice, removing the notion that it is primarily for illustrators and artists.
Durran began the session with a 10 minute or so long video where we explored what drawing is from a conceptual viewpoint. Although not all of the points made felt like they related to my practice, others were staple elements. For example, "to layout". It was watching this video that at first allowed me to drop my preconceived ideas of drawing and that the practice does not totally relate to my discipline. Through the practice section of the session, where Durran set us a task with two drawing utensils (pens, markers, mud etc) I do not feel I took quite as much away as I did initially like I did from the video presentation. Although I liked the concept of rough mark-making and can see how this fast-paced activity could aid release a creative block, stress or even just help get warmed up before tackling a brief. This did however spark some inspiration for how marks like this could be used as part of a poster series, using the rough textures and marks made as backdrops.
After the session, I continued the mark making practice trying the same techniques with various shapes such as circles and with various types of pens and marker pens of various thicknesses, recreating the pen-drop activity, however, trying to focus the drop of the pens into denser areas of the page.
Throughout the session, we relearned what we know drawing to be and broke down preconceived notions. Throughout the development work for TMA1401, Research Methods and Project Proposal in term one, I undertook a daily user interface layout challenge and prior to this workshop had never truly thought of that as counting as drawing, as strange as that sounds. The belief that drawing was for artists and illustrators was mine, however, now I will view the practice differently. I can not say that the practice will find its way into my own creative process straight away, although, I can say that I will consider drawing, in whatever form that may be, as a form of idea creation, documentation and as a research method.
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