Special Issue 11.2: 'Drawing With the Senses - The Sensorial Nature of Drawing'
Have we considered to what extent our senses, including proprioception, and the mechanics of our musculoskeletal system impact on and influence the very way in which we draw?
Imagine standing at an easel drawing with a piece of graphite or charcoal, or signing a document with a pen, or doing any kind of drawing for that matter. To what extent are you employing more than the motion of your hand and fingers? If you are standing, your ankles, hips, thorax, head, upper-limb and your hand move together as a unit as you draw. They move as a consequence of both your conscious drawing intentions and include automatic neural activity made in the motor cortex of your brain, in support of the making of your marks. Imagine if your body from your feet, ankles, hips and thorax were immobilized in restraints, and only your upper-limb, hand and head were free to move. The marks that you would make on your chosen substrate would be significantly different than those that you would make when your body was unrestrained.
How does the substrate affect the marks that you make? Imagine drawing with graphite on a rough, cement surface, and then on a piece of cold press paper, and then on a piece of hot press paper. You get very different sensory feedback to your hand (and therefore your brain) from these different surfaces. Imagine drawing on a jagged boulder? How does surface affect your production of marks? Will the making of marks be affected by wearing a noise protection device which blocks out sound, immersing you in silence? Conversely, how will your mark-making be affected if you immerse yourself in load music. What of drawing in a room lit only by candlelight or by bright halogen lights?
In essence then, how sensorial is drawing and how do our senses contribute to and affect the marks that we make? In addition, what kinds of sensory feedback do the instruments that we use to draw with and the surfaces that we draw on influence how we draw? Addressing these questions will require personal reflection and experience as well as research into a wealth of existing academic literature on how our 5 senses (including proprioception) fashion our bodies into a dynamic drawing instrument which we can use to represent what is sensed.
