Heartsong Studio

The moment you take up your charcoal to draw, does a stillness fall within ?  Can the hand-eye-heart connection be turned on and off like a switch ?  I hope your jitters are calmed by this article:

“What draws you closer ?”

Do you remember learning to drive ?  You probably practiced with a licensed driver beside you for a few weeks before passing your test and driving solo.

Learning to really see things in order to draw them with connection, is a lot like learning to drive. It’s a new concept for many artists. 

At first, you want to look at your feet and the gear shift lever. Coordinating the clutch release with the accelerator is nerve
wracking.  No wonder they often teach new drivers in a big empty parking lot.  How can you do all this new stuff and still look at
the road ahead where you’re going ?

Learning to see into a subject, and draw directly from your eyes’ caressing it, feels awkward at first too.  Most of us are so used to drawing what we (think we) know it looks like, and watching our hand. 

Course in driving a car, the penalty for not looking where you’re going is self-evident, and an overwhelming motivator for keeping
your eyes on the road ahead. 

Would you ever say: “I know every curve in this road, I don’t need to see the road ahead.” ?  I’ll look at the gear shift lever, the radio dial, my cell phone. . .

The penalty for not seeing into the subject of our drawing is not as immediately obvious perhaps.  Only if you have seen drawings which pull you in with such passionate connection, will you know
what you’d be missing.

Of course, while driving you need to occasionally look in the rear view or side mirrors, or at the speedometer.   Soon it becomes automatic, only a glance, while keeping your main focus on the road
ahead.

While seeing-drawing, you need to check occasionally where your drawing tool needs to be relocated - one-third of the way from this point to the next line, for example.  This soon becomes automatic too, only a glance, while keeping your main focus on the line ahead.

Many have tried seeing-drawing for a short while and assumed it doesn’t work for them.  Even very practiced artists who employ this approach, almost always have to “warm up”.   Every other kind of
drawing uses a warm up period to get the juices flowing too.

Sometimes this priming up period lasts a very long time.  Even for very accomplished artists, that ’sacred stillness within’ doesn’t
switch on the moment you pick up the pen, pencil or charcoal. 

Often you’ll be in a state of acute agitation.  The first few drawings of a model will be nervous scribbles.  At first, the eye
cannot focus, and the hand doesn’t obey.  It is often like you collide visually with the model or subject, and struggle.

Our minds run through resentment, fault finding, and other excuses for the excessive demands on us.  The ego mind is straining too hard.  The hand keeps fighting the eyes.  The eye is shifty, does not see - it looks instead.  Flits over the surface as the brain meddles with every stroke.

Finally, if you don’t give into your everyday mind, something deeper will take over.  If you stick with opening to connection, the subject in front of you will have its say and your eyes will begin to start understanding.

Then the subject will speak to you visually - the sadness in her eyes, the eagerness in the tree’s new buds, a wrinkle in the water
that speaks volumes.  Then you’re seeing again !  All reticence disappears.  It’s like being in love.

At other times, you might spring easily into action and feel as though you’re in top form.  Then when looking over your harvest the next day, end up crumpling it all up and throwing it away. 

As long as the ego tries to force it, seeing-drawing is impossible. Once the ego lets go, it becomes effortless.

Occasionally I have heard artists refer to seeing-drawing as “blind drawing”.  This  started as a joke about how it feels at the
beginning.  The only thing blind is the ego mind, which prefers to make “knowing-drawings”.

Most people think they’re good drivers.  But many must not be as skilled as they thought or there wouldn’t be so many car accidents.
 
Exactly the same goes for drawing.  Nobody ever completes their apprenticeship in seeing into life.  If you allow it, drawing can
open you to ever deeper connections inside and out.  Seeing-drawing can draw you in to becoming one with everything you draw.

When you draw, letting your eyes lead, the objects which captivate your heart seem to ask to be drawn.  When this happens you become intimately drawn closer. There is a passage in the Song of Songs of the Old Testament  - “Draw me and we shall run”.

Not familiar with the term seeing-drawing ?
You can see for yourself by downloading my free guidebook:  “How you can draw by learning to see”.  This is only an introduction.  It’s in your hands how far you run with it.

All the best to you and your art,
Celeste Varley
Heartsong Studio - Helping the Creative Spirit to Soar.
http://www.heartsongstudio.com