Thinking Through Drawing

• In Event: 56.044 - Visual Thinking in Action Through Drawing and Comics

Abstract

1. Objectives: What can cognitive science teach us about the kinds of thinking enabled and enacted through the drawing process? This presentation addresses how drawing externalizes the mind in action, revealing how we observe, understand and invent. The presenter will share results from an interdisciplinary study that integrated methods and theory from art and cognitive psychology to study cognitive interactions underlying contemporary artists’ improvisational drawing practices.

2. Theoretical framework: Lines and marks on surfaces are ways of having and constructing ideas and observations equally as they constitute ways of expressing them. Improvisational drawing relies upon moment-to-moment invention without a clear end in mind. Instead it is guided by a series of directed, top-down, and sensory, bottom-up interactions, as the drawer sees and responds to the marks she has made on the drawing surface. Experts tend to postpone resolution in favor of ambiguity, while novices rush to finish their drawings, prematurely fixating on solutions (Verstijnen et al., 1998).

3. Methods: The participatory component of the demonstration is based on how drawing is used to generate novel concepts in professional practice. The internal dialog professionals use to generate novel ideas is simulated as an active discussion between workshop participants, as they collaborate in teams to negotiate the progress of their drawings out loud. Through this guided activity, even participants who think they “can’t draw” surprise themselves with what they create with others.

4. Data sources: This presentation is based on a qualitative study describing dialogic interactions in the drawing process across a variety of contemporary practices. In this study, drawing was used as a research tool, to analyze the data and visualize underlying concepts. Despite differences in scale, materials, and subject matter, five common actions were identified: to locate, extend, connect, reinforce or revise. Launching and extending a process, making unexpected connections, focusing on specific features while attending to the underlying overall structure: these are essential elements in any creative activity.

5. Results: Participants in this demonstration/presentation will draw individually and collaboratively, and reflect on their experiences, which will be related to the research findings. Teams of two to four participants create drawings together based on a series of step by step instructions. Despite the uniformity of the instructions, each team will achieve unique results. In previous iterations of this activity, final drawings are often perceived as surprisingly powerful, evocative and unique. Participants at all levels gain an expanded repertoire of drawing “moves,” as well as new and flexible collaborative teaching methods that can be translated and used in a variety of 2-D and 3-D media.

6. Significance: Drawing can be understood as the visible trace of the ways in which we think not just with our brains, but with our eyes, hands and bodies as well. A study participant explained that the pleasure of drawing comes “when the formless void of marks and erasures burp up something funny or alive.” This represents an everyday kind of creativity, that experts acquire through effortful practice and which may be taught and learned.

Author

• Andrea Kantrowitz, SUNY - College at New Paltz