Day 23. The Hear and Now
Paying attention to the sounds around us.
Hello, my truly truly truly truly outrageous friend(s)! So happy you are here.
Day 23 of 30. How’s your creativity and attention feeling? How about that inner critic? Lightening up at all? Just one more week to go…. I can’t believe it. So proud of you. Proud of US.
Quick note about that DrawTogether Code of Conduct I shared yesterday: “Be curious. Be creative. Be kind. If you can’t be these things, take a break and come back when you’re ready." That was for the space and each other, yes. But it’s also for OURSELVES. If you ever feel frustrated or impatient with your drawing or yourself, you don’t need to keep banging your head against a wall or otherwise berate yourself. Take a break. Get a snack. Do a little dance. Come back in 2 minutes, 10 minutes, or 10 days - whenever you’re ready to return. Drawing ain’t going anywhere and neither am I. 😘
Alright, let’s tune back into the SENSES.
The Black Book of Colors
I wonder if you’ve seen the book The Black Book of Colors, written by Menena Cottin, with art By Rosina Faria.
The Black Book of Colors is a children’s book unlike any other I’ve seen. Using simple langue and textured art, this book - printed entirely in black - shows us page by page how a person who isn’t sighted SEES without vision. Using tactile art (embossing and texture) we explore a printed landscape through touch, taste, smell, and sound. After just a few pages, a vivid world comes alive - no visual pictures necessary. It’s a revelation.
This book pushes the boundaries of what a book can do. More importantly, it pushes readers to imagine what we can do - sighted or not - when we pay close attention to the world around us.
As drawers, we rely so much on sight as our vehicle to experience the world. But it’s not the only way.
Many ways to See
People who are visually impaired rely on other senses to interpret their surroundings. A 2019 study found that people born blind or who lose their sight early in life develop more sophisticated hearing than sighted people. Non-sighted people literally hear more than people who are sighted. It’s interesting to think about what our landscapes would sound like if we couldn’t see - and how we might represent that visually. After all, you don’t have to be sighted to draw.
Well, today we are going do a little attention experiment.
Instead of looking a the world around us, we are going to listen to it. Yup, even inside in the early morning hours or midday or late at night, whatever time it is where you are, we are going to use our ears to see. And we are going to draw a…
