Day 32 - Ch 4-6 - Drawing on the Artist Within

Chapter 4 opens with Edwards link between seeing and creativity, as “creativity is the ability to see problems in new ways.”  Her book began with an investigate into language and how it was linked to drawing.   As a person who never learns to read or write can use language, Edwards parallels this to drawing.  One may never learn to draw, yet one is able to use the language of drawing as the minute changes are similar to how one sees facial expressions.  In searching further into just how visual and perceptual skills fit into creativity, she references the Five Stages of Creativity - First Insight, Saturation, Incubation, Illumination, Verification.  The author reviews Saturation and Verification as these two seemed easier in understanding.   Saturation is a place where information is gathered and verification is where the information is placed into a form one can understand the idea such as with writing, painting, etc.   She sees these two as part of the educational system of teaching students how to verify ideas.  She further expands on these into two areas of understanding — with Saturation and Verification as the concept of CONSCIOUS thought, and First Insight, Incubation and Illumination as the concept of UNCONSCIOUS thought.  Within each of these concepts, a language of understanding is different from each other, as she postulates, "drawing requires cognitive shift” from right brain and left brain function.  Edwards takes the reader toward understanding her hypothetical structure of the creative process.  She begins with First Insight as this is the first stages that begins to address the “problem.”  In gaining an understanding of what is happening in each side of the brain as it processes the information, Edwards found several types of logic.  Some are within the left brain, yet also within the right brain.  The right brain has a "willingness to accept enormous complexity” which the left brain does not.  Thus begins within the stage of Incubation toward the path of illumination in the creative process.  The incubation stage may take months to process the information.  And suddenly illumination happens.  Incubation and Illumination are outside conscious awareness.  She still finds her question at the end of the chapter elusive to understanding how obscure the first stages of First Insight, Incubation and Illumination, and how to teach them.  As well as how to draw these from the artist within.  

Edwards takes the reader in Chapter 5 through an overview of the language of drawing.  She began to see how there is a language of drawing within seeing lines, and how one can interpret them, as these are parallel to a verbal language and to non-verable language. There are many nonverbal languages:  sound (music); movement (dance or sport); abstract symbolic (science); color (painting); film; nature (genetic code) .  And within each of these languages, requires skill.  For example, with sound, a possible use of an instrument; with movement requires certain levels of physical fitness; etc.  Drawing requires motor skills, and instrument with which to use to make a mark.

In the next chapter, Edwards demonstrates her point about the language of line as every person has the ability to draw as one writes their own name.  A signature is unique to each person, and presents information about the person.  She gives examples within Fig. 6.2.  Here she distinguishes between fast drawn lines and ones that are drawn slower, as one can see the different between them.  The fluidity of the fast drawn lines and the stocky, stunted, shaking with the lines drawn slower.  Through this understanding of line, Edwards reviews some of the masters such as Matisse or Rembrandt.  Every line is a form of communication. 

I encourage you to buy a copy of Drawing on the Artist Within for a better understanding of your own creative process.  Whether you're a master artist or beginning artist, this is an excellent book.

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