Day 26. Drawing Delight
Where we put our attention grows
My friends. Drawing with you is a delight. This whole darn DrawTogether thing is delightful. As hard news continues to unfold, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, helpless. F*ing FURIOUS sometimes. Always pulled in a million directions. Drawing for 10 minutes every day may feel like a teeny weeny act of creative agency, but my friends, the tiniest seeds can sprout the most gigantic trees. What you are doing here matters. You continue to show up. Don’t discount that.
It’s day 26 of 30. Let’s keep going.
Yesterday we did a deep dive into light and shadow. In art we call it “value.” It was a nerdy lesson, I concede. Challenging for a lot of us, I’m sure! While developing a new skill can be hard, I promise you, that discomfort you feel learning something new is your FRIEND. Make friends with that feeling! When you feel that frustrating gap between what you want to make and what you’re doing, that means you are growing. You are literally learning to see the world in a new way. First of all, how cool is that. And second of all, how could learning something so powerful not be a little hard?? Well, you did it. Feel proud of that.
Also, now you can use the world “Penumbra.” Very impressive.
What’s happens after the 30 Days?
While the big 30 Day daily drawing project might end, DrawTogether and the Grown-Ups Table will continue! We will keep doing what we always do, week in and week out: we will draw together.
Subscribers to DrawTogether will continue to get full access to Grown-Ups Table drawing lessons and assignments I publish every Sunday. You’ll also get to continue sharing work, meeting other artists around the world in the community chat. In 2025, DrawTogether/The GUT will feature visiting artists, field trips, art supply reviews and recommendations, skill lessons (with special guest teachers!) and even some live video studio visits with yours truly. Paid subscribers will also continue to have access to the 30 days lessons and assignments through February.
To stay connected, make sure you are a paid subscriber and not a free one. I recommend switching to from monthly to annual memberships because it is a LOT cheaper, and while I won’t stop you from overspending, I think you should use your money for art supplies. :)
Alright enough housekeeping. Back to the fun stuff.
Where we put our attention
Last week we dedicated our attention to our five senses. We used drawing to get in touch with a sensual experience of the world, and discovered how that helps us become more present and grounded in the moment.
For the last few days of the 30 Days of Drawing, we’re shifting our attention away from the our internal world and onto the world around us.
Where we put our attention grows. Right now, the world is streaming big ol piles of anxiety and fear into our eyeballs non-stop. It’s almost impossible to avoid - and honestly, it’s important not to tune out completely. But we have to take care of our health. We are what we eat. We MUST balance our diet. We need to take a heaping tablespoon of beauty, awe, curiosity, and kindness at least every four hours if we’re gonna get through this. One fail-safe way to do that? Some people look for birds. Others look at stars. Personally, I find it most joyful and easy when I look for DELGHT.
DELIGHT
If you have been with me at the Grown-Ups Table for a while you’ve heard me talk about Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, or its follow up The Book of (More) Delights. Like Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark the book is a touchstone, especially in the moments that test our resolve. It seems like a very, very good moment to revisit it.
Several years back, poet Ross Gay spent one year writing about a delight a day. These short essays (“essayettes”, as he calls them) celebrate something small and overlooked that brings him joy: a 90s pop song, bees, carrying a tomato seedling on board a plane, lying down in public, gardening… Reading these essayettes, his delights become yours.
When I first read Ross’ book, I was having a hard time. Despite being the middle of summer when things are supposed to feel sunny, my life felt dismal, and overwhelming. For some reason, one afternoon, I was pulled back to Ross’ Book of Delights. I pushed aside my to do list, plopped my butt in the sun, cracked open his book, and read a fistful of his essayettes. (They are short, only a few pages each.) Almost immediately, two things happened: 1. I felt lighter, less up in my head, and 2. I was struck by how similar his essayettes are to drawing.
How is Ross Gay’s delight similar to the practice of drawing?
Process and Attention.
In PROCESS. Gay’s short essays have a starting point, but he quickly meanders into deeper, unexpected territory. In his essay Stacking Delights, he explains that he writes, “to wonder about it with a pen and a notebook.”
That’s what we do when we draw!
We may have a loose idea of where we are headed when we sit down to draw, but rarely do we know where the drawing of it will lead. Let go of expectations, and a drawing becomes something far richer than we could ever expect. The appreciation of a subject happens in the doing, in the process, not in the thinking of doing it, or in the finished work. (Process over outcome, GUT peeps!) Let curiosity and care lead the way.
In ATTENTION: In his preface, Gay writes:
“It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study… I felt my life to be more full of delight. Not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight. I also learned this year that my delight grows — much like love and joy — when I share it.”
This is exactly what I mean when I say “Drawing is looking and looking is loving.” (Yes, that is a link to my TED talk, which you might want to watch if you haven’t, if only to know more about who leads the Grown-Ups Table, and why I care so much about drawing, and why I hope you keep drawing with me after our 30 Days is up.)
When we look closely at something like we do when we draw it - when we give something our total sensory attention, and use our physical bodies to manifest and document that careful noticing - we cannot help but care for it. Even love it! And when we love something, we want to take care of it. It’s a virtuous cycle, and one that all life is predicated upon.
Where we put our attention matters.
“An artist is not special. An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.” - Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) drew every day.
You may know Ruth’s work from her mesmerizing wire sculptures that are, in fact, drawings in air… I’ve written about her quite a bit: about the influence the experience being imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp had on her drawing, attending Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and how her work as an educator in San Francisco was as much part of her art practice as her drawing was.
In 2023 I went to an exhibit of her drawings at The Whitney Museum in New York titled “Through Line.” I was blown away. In addition to the often large scale, intricate, line and shape based abstract drawings on display (many remind me of the meditation and repetition we practiced in our first week), there were detailed, careful, free flowing, lovingly loose studies of plants and flowers.
When you look at these drawings you can feel how delighted she was by the flowers.
Her lines are not there to represent her subject. She was exploring her subject. The lines are evidence of her curiosity. More than space, her lines demarcate a journey.
Also, persimmons! Asawa worked with watercolor with a loose skill that only comes from lots and lots and LOTS of practice. Remember, she drew every day.
Delightful, no?
How do you think Ruth chose her subjects?
In my experience, the more you draw, the more you find to draw. The idea of a “perfect subject” disappears. Everything becomes interesting when you look at through shape and line. I bet the everyday objects Ruth had around her home caught her attention and brought her delight. She probably just picked the things that called to her that day, that said to her “there’s more here to see if you draw me.” That’s my hunch.
So that is what we are doing today.