Drawing Community

“From the dawning of the day, the air is filled with countless images for which the eye acts as a magnet.”

—LEONARDO DA VINCI

“There’s always room out there for the hand-drawn image”

—MATT GROENING

“Drawing used to be a civilized thing to do, like reading and writing. It was taught in elementary schools. It was democratic. It was a boon to happiness.’’

—MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

‘’Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see, to see correctly and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye.’’

—KIMON NICOLAIDES, The Natural Way to Draw, (1941)

“Merely to see, therefore, is not enough. It is necessary to have a fresh, vivid, physical contact with the object you draw through as many of the senses as possible—and especially through the sense of touch.”

—KIMON NICOLAIDES, The Natural Way to Draw, (1941)

“In the history of inventions, many creative ideas began with small sketches’’

—HENNING NELMS, Thinking with a Pencil, (1981) p. xiv (New York: Ten Speed Press)

The painter draws with his eyes, not with his hands. Whatever he sees, if he sees it clearly, he can put it down. The putting of it down requires, perhaps, much care and labor, but no more muscular agility than it takes for him to write his name. Seeing clear [sic] is the important thing.

—MAURICE GROSSER, The Painter’s Eye, (1951)

“If a certain kind of activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state.”

—ROBERT HENRY, The Art Spirit, (1923)

“Don’t worry about your originality. You couldn’t get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or for worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.”

—ROBERT HENDRY, The Art Spirit, (1923)

“That in all of these sudden illuminations my ideas took shape in a primarily visual-spatial form without, so far as I can introspect, any verbal intervention, is in accordance with what has always been my preferred mode of thinking ...”

—ROGER N. SHEPARD, Visual Learning, Thinking, and Communication, (1978)

“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with work and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large—this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone.”

—ALDOUS HUXLEY, The Doors of Perception, (1954)

“I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.”

—FREDERICK FRANCK, The Zen of Seeing, (1973)

“... at the time when you spoke of my becoming a painter, I thought it very impractical and would not hear of it. What made me stop doubting was reading a clear book on perspective, Cassange’s Guide to the ABC of Drawing, and a week later I drew the interior of a kitchen with stove, chair, table, and window—in their places and on their legs—whereas before it had seemed to me that getting depth and the right perspective into a drawing was witchcraft or pure chance.”

—Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Letter 184, p.

“The scribblings of any child clearly indicate how thoroughly immersed he is in the sensation of moving his hand and crayon aimlessly over a surface, depositing a line in his path. There must be some quantity of magic in this alone.”

—EDWARD HILL, The Language of Drawing, (1966)

“By the time the child can draw more than a scribble, by age three or four years, and already a well-formed body of conceptual knowledge formulated in language dominates his memory and controls his graphic work ... Drawings are graphic accounts of essentially verbal processes. As an essentially verbal education gains control, the child abandons his graphic efforts and relies almost entirely on words. Language has first spoilt drawing and then swallowed it up completely.”

—KARL BUHLER written in 1930 by German psychologist, (1879–1963)

“Observation and recording In my experience, the only way to be sure I’m looking carefully enough at something – particularly something with lots of detail – is to draw it. The vital importance of this is that there may be something new and unexpected there; unless I draw I won’t look carefully enough to see the unexpected.”

-Adelaide Carpenter, Genetic scientist (quoted in Phipps, 2006)

I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing, the contingent way that images arrive in the work lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are or how we operate in the world.

—William Kentridge

''to draw is not only to measure and put down, but it is also to receive. When the intensity of looking reaches a certain degree, one becomes aware of equally intense energy coming towards one, through the appearance of whatever it is one is scrutinizing . . . It is a ferocious and inarticulated dialogue''

- John Berger (Artist and Writer)

''Most of what I think I know, I know from having drawn..... I often use drawing to verify the truth of things......Drawing something into a drawing draws it out of me''

- Michael G. Moore (THINKING THROUGH DRAWING: PRACTICE INTO KNOWLEDGE, p.35)

'The question is not what you look at, but what you see'

— Henry David Thoreau