Day 7. Inspiration is Everywhere
We just have to pay attention. Then do something with it.
Hellooooo creative cohort!
Day 7 = exactly one full week of drawing for ten minutes every darn day. My hat is off to you!! you’ve been reading the lessons but haven’t started yet THAT’S OKAY, TOO. You can start today. We’ll keep these lessons and assignments open and available to paying subscribers through the end of February. That means if you sign up for an annual membership, you can start today, do the 30 days, then continue to draw with the whole GUT crew through the rest of 2025.
How to use the GUT group chat/big art share
While there can be a little learning curve getting the hang of posting your artwork in the “DrawTogether with WendyMac” chat thread, it is well worth the effort, I promise! The GUT community is the heart of the Grown-Ups Table- and during these 30 days, sharing our work with each other helps us keep inspired, motivated, and make new friends. (Me included! I’m in there every day!)
I think the main challenge around the chat is the whole “reply” thing - it can be confusing. So we updated the instructions with more detail in the FAQ, and here is the nitty gritty:
In the group chat, Substack offers two kinds of replies: “Reply” and “Reply in a new subthread.”
A Reply will quote the previous comment and post chronologically within the main thread. Substack’s chat function defaults to this method.
By clicking “Reply in a new subthread” your comment will branch the conversation and keep all related comments together. You can access this option with a long-press (on mobile) or clicking the “…” menu to the right of the comment.
Hope that helps! Again, check the FAQ for more info, and if you’re still hitting a wall, drop a question in the comments or chat, or email us at community@drawtogether.studio
Moving from “inside” drawing (body, breathing and your gut) into “outside” drawing (drawing to see)
Alright, moving on to day 7! These next two exercises are going to push you a little - first in attention, and then in being okay with making some mistakes. ;)
Today we are going to start using our “art eyes” and experimenting with some unusual approaches. If you ever feel intimidated, draw some circles and grids and spirals. Get back in touch with that calm peaceful feeling, let go of expectations, and just draw. Let’s keep doing that while we start to SEE the world around us - through drawing.
“When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.” - Ellsworth Kelly
Inspiration is Everywhere
Remember yesterday how we used our instincts (our GUTs!) to create shapes and then turned them into mini masterpieces?? Well, today we are going to do that again - but we are going to find our inspiration in shapes and colors in the world around us.
And we’ll do this by learning to look at the world like one of my all-time favorite artists…
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly was a prolific artist who painted, drew, made sculptures, prints, and took photos. You name the art form, and he played around with it. (May we all be so curious!) Kelly grew up a bit of a loner, and suffering from speech challenges. He never felt words were an adequate form of communication, which led him to trusting and investing visual communication more.
After a stint in the military as a camoflouge painter (!), he traveled to Paris to study art. There, Kelly visited an exhibition that changed the trajectory of his art, and his life. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t the art that grabbed him. His attention was drawn somewhere else….
Here’s the story in Kelly’s own words:1
In October of 1949 at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris I noticed the large windows between the paintings. It interested me more than the art exhibited. I made a drawing of the window and later in my studio I made what I considered my first object, “Window, Museum of Modern Art, Paris.” From then on, painting as I had known it was finished for me… Everywhere I looked, everything I saw became something to be made, and it had to be made exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom….
That moment, and that window, led to the artwork Kelly is known for. This kind of art - simple color fields and such - is often dismissed by folks who say “Oh, come on, I could do that.” But once you understand what Kelly is doing when he creates his minimal shape paintings and sculptures, you’ll never look at them the same again.
More important, you may never look at the WORLD the same again.
Take for example this painting below, titled “Red White.”
What IS it?
Well, technically it’s a big canvas with red and white paint on it.
And it’s also shape (two, if you include the negative shape.) And it’s a color. Two colors to be precise. Does it represent something? According to Kelly, not really. Kelly makes these compositions to create a visual experience for the viewer that is more than a picture OF something. He wants these paintings to BE something - to stand on their own as objects. But was this big red painting invented out of the blue? No, it has a story behind it. Everything Kelly makes comes from somewhere.
Kelly is the master of PAYING ATTENTION. He wanders around the world collecting with his eyes. He makes constant observations of shape and color, then he returns to his studio to continue the work. He makes a ton of little thumbnails (like you did yesterday!) based on what caught his attention. Then he plays and experiments with composition and color, and eventually that thing that caught his attention becomes a simple, powerful abstraction that kind of holds an energy. The essence of the thing.
Back to the painting above.
What if I told you that when Kelly was little he saw a tomato splattered on a window and was captivated.2 He was struck by the color and the composition of the smooshed tomato on the window. It was his A-HA moment: that something so basic could be transformed - become “a visual abstraction.” That tomato burned into his brain, and launched him on his path to art making, eventually leading him to become one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. All because of a tomato.
So I wonder, is the painting above inspired by a tomato??
“Everywhere I looked, everything I saw became something to be made…” - Ellsworth Kelly
Kelly was also a big birdwatcher.
His mother and grandmother introduced him to the practice when he was six and it remains a lifelong hobby. Kelly said in a wonderful interview that “colour fascinated [him] in birds—red streak here, blue streak there, green streak here.” Take look at his painting above. Do you think it could have been inspired by those birds? Or how about this Blue painting below. It is in fact a shaped canvas, mounted on the wall so it kind of floats off the wall. It might not be shaped quite like a bird, but does it somehow still look like and FEEL like a bird?
It sure does to me.
What does it look like when we reduce something down to its most bare essence - its color, its shape, its motion, its feeling? How can we capture that essence in a drawing, a painting or a sculpture?
Ellsworth Kelly does not represent the world in his paintings, but he is inspired by what we sees in the world to paint them. I think we can learn so much by seeing the world like Ellsworth Kelly does: we can always be on the hunt for interesting visual moments: shapes and colors and spaces and contrasts and compositions. And then, when we see something that strikes, we can use his tools and approach of simplifying to the most essential color and shape to create something that FEELS like that experience. What’s more true than a painting of a thing? A painting that feels like the thing.
A simple drawing, full of feeling.
Alright, with that, let’s get to drawing.
