{"id":4532,"date":"2018-07-26T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/?p=4532"},"modified":"2018-07-19T17:23:08","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T17:23:08","slug":"drawing-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/drawing-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Drawing Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to put into words how much I enjoy my life drawing sessions each week, and how much I gain from them. For four hours everything else melts away (except for the background music and minimal chatter) and it’s easy to get lost in the moment and to think solely in graphic terms. I count drawing as one of the most satisfying forms of meditation there is. That doesn’t mean to say there isn’t frustration involved, but the lessons learned make every line, however searching, well worth it.<\/p>\n

\"Pair\"

06.11.18\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong> \u00a92018 Elizabeth Fram, 18 x 24 inches, Graphite on paper<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Smile\"

06.25.18<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a92018 Elizabeth Fram, 18 x 24 inches, Graphite and colored pencil on paper<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Charcoal\"

07.09.18<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a92018 Elizabeth Fram, 18 x 24 inches, Graphite and charcoal on paper<\/p><\/div>\n

These thoughts from <\/span>Roy Eastland’s blog<\/a>\u00a0, ‘I Draw’,\u00a0 capture the magic beautifully:<\/span><\/p>\n

They are drawings of people and that\u2019s all they are.\u00a0 They are drawings done for drawing\u2019s sake (drawing as a way of thinking about drawing).\u00a0 They are drawings of people who were still (or fairly still) for maybe ten or twenty minutes.\u00a0 They are drawings of people but drawings of people are never just hand-made pictures of people.\u00a0 Drawings trace moments in time.\u00a0 Hand-drawn lines take time and the moment of their making is subtly replayed each time someone spends time to notice them.\u00a0 There are heavy lines, sharp lines, long lines, feathery lines\u2026 the variety is endless and each of them implies the presence of a thought.\u00a0 We change our minds as we draw and our lines capture those moments of change.\u00a0 We look and we notice something and we try to track the gist of it on the paper.\u00a0 The time taken to draw even the shortest line is there to see in its entirety all at once (like seeing a tiny life-span played out on the page).\u00a0 We pay attention to the simple presence of things whenever we draw.\u00a0 \u00a0The drawing is always wrong. \u00a0We look again and we make another line.\u00a0 Each time it is wrong in a different way but sometimes the mark is good in spite of its wrongness.\u00a0 Sometimes the line feels true or it does something interesting (something we couldn\u2019t have predicted but which is more interesting than anything we could have predicted).\u00a0 It\u2019s enough that just a small part of a drawing is interesting for it to feel good.\u00a0 As we make our mark we are bringing into play all our momentary perceptions, all our skill and memories of all the other drawings we have ever seen.\u00a0 Eventually the time is up and the pose ends and all that remains of the moment, and of the protagonists, is the drawing.\u00a0 One day the drawing will be the only thing left of that moment.\u00a0 Perhaps we make ghosts when we draw.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s hard to put into words how much I enjoy my life drawing sessions each week, and how much I gain from them. For four hours everything else melts away (except for the background music and minimal chatter) and it’s easy to get lost in the moment and to think solely in graphic terms. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44],"tags":[653,797],"class_list":["post-4532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drawing","tag-life-drawing","tag-roy-eastland"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5kO5z-1b6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4532"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4550,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532\/revisions\/4550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elizabethfram.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}