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Drawing Circles Survey
We just sent out a survey by e mail to all past and present Circlers. We would really appreciate your responses. We are writing a chapter about the Circles for a book on collaborative drawing. This is the survey.
Please e mail brewdrawingcircles@gmail.com if you have not received it by e-mail and are willing to complete the survey.
Thank you!
October 2016
Participant approaches and issues | Comments |
Rules – requesting or assuming rules | |
Reluctance to draw on some else’s drawing | |
Objections to membership or inclusion: people outside the circle or children contributing | |
Issues of ownership; ‘my book’, or wanting to control the circle, wanting ‘their book’ back at the end of the cycle | |
Issues of control: lack of control, sensations of loss when the book moved on or a drawing was reworked or obliterated, and anxiety around control and ownership, instructions left for others e.g. ‘do not draw on this page’ notices, upset participants when books got lost or failed to arrive on time | |
Participants who did not wish to work on others’ drawings and continued in their own style with their own pre-occupations | |
Communication: easier in smaller groups | |
The value ascribed to the book and project by the participant | |
Issues of privacy: the use of drawing books to explore the emotional, feelings of vulnerability and the confessional |
The visual qualities of images within the books
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The offering of ‘gifts’ to other participants: open ended speculative advances or questions posed that can be responded to in many ways | |
Messages of appreciation: e.g. ‘I love this drawing’ | |
Text used: as description of objects and images, as text and image, as poetic enigma | |
The development of shared imagery and/or narratives between pairs or groups of participants | |
The use of pictorial framing devices by individuals in an attempt to protect drawings from being reworked by others | |
Issues of isolation manifest by books in which no clear conversation takes place, consisting of pages with unconnected drawings | |
Submerging images made by others: e.g. burying imagery under pattern, collaging over drawings | |
Materiality: cutting spaces through sheets of paper, creating doors and windows | |
Challenging the format and notion of the book: adding paper to alter formats, denial of access by closing down the space of the book e.g. gluing all the pages together | |
Visual and conceptual clashes: ugly versus pretty, conceptual versus decorative, provocative interventions aimed at exploring clashes of thought and value systems | |
Storytelling: over a number of consecutive pages, or throughout a book or from book to book | |
The unexpected: images that could only have been generated by two people coming together, surrealist humour | |
Playing with the 3 dimensional aspects of the books by adding found objects such as a turntable, paint brushes, a reading light or a bag | |
Working all over and all through a book to unify it | |
Duration / time phased approaches |
Any other comments:
New Circle
Hi Circlers
I hope all is well.
As some of you know, I have had quite a tough few months with family bereavements and illness. My apologies for any delays with replies and setting up new Circles.
We have a new Global Circle just formed; Global 14
I would love to hear how your Circles are going. Please e mail me at brewdrawingcircles.com with favourite pages to post here, and feedback.
If your Circle has ended and you would like to sign up for another one do contact me.
Best wishes
Angie Brew
Irish Circle II – Piranha Puppy and Kintsugi
The Irish Circle II and Piranha Puppy: PP has ‘interacted’ with several books. The puppy owner writes in explanation:
…It was also immediately attacked by the piraña dog so I had done big Kintsugi work which however made me happy…
Here are some pages of the book so far, including Piranha Puppy’s work, and Kingtsugi response:
Nothing is ever truly broken, that’s the philosophy behind the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi which repairs smashed pottery by using beautiful seams of gold. As a philosophy it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
Kintsugi draws attention to the life, rather than the look of a pot
Kintsugi (金継ぎ?) (Japanese: golden joinery) or Kintsukuroi (金繕い?) (Japanese: golden repair) Defined as “to repair with gold”,[1] is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery withlacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique.[2][3][4]
New Video of Chinese Drawing Circle
the Ningbo Local Drawing Circle
video of first year of the Circle
They have their own blog.
Plus a regular slot in a local paper, the Ningbo Focus
They are starting a new Circle for 2016.
Contact Mia Tedjosaputro if you want to join a Chinese Circle
DrawLearn
We have a new educational project, and are starting with Shakespeare. A 14 yr old artist, Abhi Dinsmore-Tuli, is serialising plays in weekly instalments. Check out the Tempest page on the DrawLearn website for Act 1 Scenes 1 & 2.
http://drawlearn.weebly.com/the-tempest.html
Drawing Circles analysis 2015-2016
We are writing a paper about the Circles, to reflect on the collaborative process.
Please send numbered lists of your insights, observations and thoughts on the process to brewdrawingcircles@gmail.com
Maria Popova on hand written letters
As I ran my fingers over the lined paper, words subtly debossed by the pressure of my grandmother’s ballpoint pen, I wondered about the continuity of personal identity across this shift — my letter-writing self seemed to have entirely different things to say, and to say them entirely differently, than my email-writing self, and yet the two selves belong to the same person. Each appears to be a dormant potentiality, beckoned forth by the respective medium of expression — something that makes it hard not to notice, and hard not to worry about, how such shifts in medium might shape what parts of ourselves we manifest, which in turn add up to the sum total of our personal identity.
- our different drawing identities come out in the Circles. It’s exciting!
Draw your childhood
Drawing Room at The Foundling Museum.
The #foundlingmuseum are running an #Instagram #competition and invite you to enter. Send @foundlingmuseum a #picture via Instagram of a #drawing, #painting or#digital work depicting a moment from your #childhood for the chance to win one of two #exciting #prizes!
More info at www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk/events/drawing-on-childhood. Closing date is 4 March 2016.